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THE VAN DYKE BOOK 

SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



BY 



EDWIN MIMS. Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN 
TRINITY COLLEGE, DURHAM, N. C. 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY 
BROOKE VAN DYKE 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1905 



APR Y JyUi) 
eopy B. 






Copyright, 1905, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THE FOOT-PATH TO PEACE 

To be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and 
to vi^ork and to play and to look up at the stars ; to be contented 
with your possessions, but not satisfied with yourself until you 
have made the best of them ; to despise nothing in the world 
except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cow- 
ardice ; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your 
disgusts ; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his 
kindness of heart and gentleness of manners ; to think seldom of 
your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ ; and to 
spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit, in God's 
out-of-doors — these are little guide-posts on the foot-path to peace. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTION ix 



PART I— MEMORIES AND PICTURES 

A Boy and a Rod 3 

Little Rivers 13 

Wood Magic 22 

Camping Out 26 

The Guides ......... 26 

Running the Rapids ....... 29 

The Tent . . . . . . . ' ' 33 

A Little Fishing ........ 36 

Morning and Evening ....... 40 

The Open Fire 44 

Lighting Up . . . . . . . .44 

The Camp Fire ........ 47 

The Little Friendship Fire 50 

Altars of Remembrance ...... 52 

PART II— SONGS OUT-OF-DOORS 

Birds in the Morning ....... 61 

The Song-Sparrow 63 

The Maryland Yellow Throat . . ... 67 

.V 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

The Whip-poor-will . <. <> „ o . . 67 

The Mocking-Bird 69 

The AxNgler's Wish in Town 70 

The Veery 72 

The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet 74 

Wings of a Dove 77 



PART III— STORIES 



A Friend of Justice 
The Thrilling Moment 
The Keeper of the Light 
A Handful of Clay 
The First Christmas-Tree 



81 

92 

lOI 

124 

128 



PART IV— BITS OF BLUE-SKY PHILOSOPHY 

The Arrow -151 

Four Things 151 

Life 151 

Work 152 

The Gentle Life 153 



STORY OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE FROM A 

CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW . . . .159 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Portrait of Henry van Dyke . . Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Down the Peribonca 30 

"The Little Friendship Fire" .... 46 

The Situation Was Not Without Its Embar- 
rassments q8 



J 



**I AM the Keeper of the Light" . . .116 
The Fields Around Lay Bare to the Moon . 132 



INTRODUCTION 

To the already large number of mature and cul- 
tivated readers who have found in Dr. Henry van 
Dyke a friend and helper, it is hoped that many chil- 
dren may now be added. From his writings such 
essays, poems, and stories have been selected as may 
lead younger people into a genuine appreciation of 
nature and of human life as it is lived out-of-doors. 
From the reading of such selections must inevitably 
come a wholesome and manly view of life. 

In Miss van Dyke's interesting sketch at the end 
of this volume she says that she and her brothers, 
in their younger days, often wished that their father 
might write a book for children. She has made 
clear, what a careful reader had felt before, that 
many of the stories, incidents, and poems here given 
have grown out of his relations to children. The 
memories of their early companionship, so tenderly 
portrayed by the daughter, are no less sacred to the 
father. To the Eden of his own childhood he has 
often turned in his imagination and been welcomed 
by the stranger-child — "the little child he used to 
be." These memories have been quickened by asso- 
ciation with his children, who have been partners 
with him in much of his work. 

A child should therefore find in these writings a 



X Introduction 

manifestation of the childlike mind, thoroughly at 
home in the woods and by the little rivers. It 
should be an inspiration, too, to realize that these 
selections are written by a man in the very prime 
of life — one of the best beloved and most useful of 
contemporary writers. The facts of his life may be 
obtained in the sketch already referred to. But 
there should come to even the younger readers of 
these selections a sense of the personality of the au- 
thor. His personality may be felt in everything he 
has written — like Charles Lamb and Robert Louis 
Stevenson, he has written without reserve, and yet 
without egotism, of himself, his family, his friends, 
his likes and dislikes. When he does not write 
of himself, there is a light touch in his work that 
is the most personal element in style. 

Even in a book of selections like this something 
of the range of the writer's work may be seen. It 
is rare that a man does such uniformly good work 
in fiction, poetry, and essay writing. There are 
contemporaries who have surpassed him in one or 
the other of these lines, but none who has shown 
the same versatility or worked with greater atten- 
tion to the ideals of his art. His versatility as a 
man of letters is, however, but one feature of his 
many-sided life. He is widely known as a fisher- 
man, easily holding among his contemporaries the 
place of Izaak Walton. He has his place in the col- 
lege and university world — as a teacher of literature 
at Princeton and as a preacher at most, if not all, the 
leading colleges in America. He is a preacher of 



Introduction xi 

decided power, and as Moderator of the Presby- 
terian Church at a critical time in its history did 
much to promote the cause of unity in all branches 
of the church, as well as to bring about a more rea- 
sonable statement of creed. Personally he is a man 
of attractive manners and of brilliant conversational 
powers. His various accomplishments and achieve- 
ments in diverse fields were finely portrayed in a 
recent sonnet by Edmund Clarence Stedman at a 
dinner given to Dr. van Dyke by the Lotus Club 
of New York City: 

Health to the poet, scholar, wit, divine, 
In whom sweet Nature would all gifts combine 
To make us hang upon his lips and say — 
The Admirable Crichton of our day, 
Whose quill and lute and voice are weapons shear 
That quite outvie that gallant's swift rapier — 
Whose dulcet English, from its fount that wells 
This night, the Scotsman's dozen tongues excels ! 
Long may he live, to wear the cloistral gown, 
Or from his Little Rivers bring to town — 
From every haunt where purling waters flow — 
The mystic flower that only votaries know ! 
Wouldst view what Nature's portraiture is like ? 
The Dame herself hath sat to this van Dyke. 

His success in so many fields may be explained in 
part by his ability to "toil terribly" and his power of 
insight that enables him to go straight to the mark, 
whether he is preaching a sermon or writing a poem 
or story. But the full explanation may be seen in 
his richly developed personality. As his friend, Mr. 



xii Introduction 

Hamilton W. Mabie, says, he lives in all his facul- 
ties. He loves nature, but is no solitary, for he is 
at his best with men and women; few men have 
finer appreciation of literature, but he knows that 
it is but secondary to life ; he has a certain delicate 
humor, but it is mingled with an equally delicate 
pathos; he is thoroughly at home in the world of 
music and art, and all that belongs to a refined civ- 
ilization, but there is "a wilding flavor in his blood" 
which all the civilization of the world will not 
eradicate. Crowning all his qualities is a vital faith 
in the Christian religion, which gives unity to his 
character and his work. And there is, notwithstand- 
ing the variety of his work, an essential unity under- 
lying it. When a pastor he often substituted a 
story for a sermon, as ''The Toiling of Felix" or 
the story of 'The Other Wise Man." As a story- 
writer he combines with local color an inner light — 
a desire to get at the mysterious element of the 
human soul — "the very pulse of the machine." The 
stories in his latest volume have as a motive the 
inward search for happiness symbolized by the Blue 
Flower — the token of the infinite in man. As a 
teacher and critic of literature he has emphasized 
the spiritual quality thereof more than any technical 
points involved. In all his poetry, as James Whit- 
comb Riley suggests in a recent sonnet, there may 
be heard the anthem of a devout soul. 

What, it may be asked, is the attitude of such a 
man to the age in which he lives? He has in a 
way appropriated the full spirit of his age, or at 



Introduction xiii 

least he has not railed against it. And yet he has 
been strong in his insistence upon certain dangers 
inherent in the American life of the present time. 
In a time of hurry and confusion he has set forth 
the ideal of the gentle life. In an age of industrial- 
ism he has been a sentinel of the spirit. The ten- 
dency of literature in his time has been toward a 
certain realism; he has kept alive the spirit of a 
healthy idealism. Living in an academic commu- 
nity during recent years, and all his life interested 
in colleges and universities, he has pointed out the 
danger of extreme specialization, finding that for 
himself and for others there is a necessity for the 
abundant life, rather than one confined within nar- 
row limits. At a time when, as Mr. Bliss Perry 
has recently pointed out, there is a danger of indif- 
ferentism among men of culture and wealth, he has 
written with enthusiasm of nature, literature, and 
life. To men resting in ''the crude unregenerate 
strength of intellect" he has told the need of the 
simple human heart. To the church, insisting over- 
much on dogma, he has uttered a protest in behalf 
of a spiritual life that transcends dogma, while to 
men of doubt he has preached the gospel of a divine 
personality. 

The full significance of the preceding paragraph 
cannot be felt by children, but even without this 
realization of what Dr. van Dyke has meant to the 
age in which he has lived, they should be able to 
absorb much of his spirit. After all, a better intro- 
duction cannot be given to this book than his own 



xiv Introduction 

words at the end of his first chapter in ''Little 
Rivers" : 

"You shall not be deceived in this book. It is 
nothing but a handful of rustic variations on the 
old tune of 'Rest and be thankful/ a record of un- 
conventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a few bits 
of blue-sky philosophy in it. There is, so far as I 
know, very little useful information and absolutely 
no criticism of the universe to be found in this vol- 
ume. So if you are what Izaak Walton calls 'a 
severe, sour-complexioned man,' you would better 
carry it back to the bookseller, and get your money 
again, if he will give it to you, and go your way 
rejoicing after your own melancholy fashion. 

"But if you care for plain pleasures, and infor- 
mal company, and friendly observations on men and 
things (and a few true fish-stories), then perhaps 
you may find something here not unworthy your 
perusal. And so I wish that your winter fire may 
burn clear and bright while you read these pages ; 
and that the summer days may be fair, and the fish 
may rise merrily to your fly, whenever you follow 
one of these little rivers." 

Edwin Mims. 



PART I 
MEMORIES AND PICTURES 



A BOY AND A ROD 



Strangely enough, you cannot recall the boy 
himself at all distinctly. There is only the faintest 
image of him on the endless roll of films that has 
been wound through your mental camera; and in 
the very spots where his small figure should appear, 
it seems as if the pictures were always light-struck. 
Just a blur, and the dim outline of a new cap, or a 
well-beloved jacket with extra pockets, or a much- 
hated pair of copper-toed shoes — that is all you 
can see. 

But the people that the boy saw, the companions 
who helped or hindered him in his adventures, the 
sublime and marvellous scenes among the Catskills 
and the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains, in 
the midst of which he lived and moved and had his 
summer holidays — all these stand out sharp and 
clear, as the "Bab Ballads" say, 

" Photographically lined 
On the tablets of your mind." 

And most vivid do these scenes and people become 
when the vague and irrecoverable boy who walks 
among them carries a rod over his shoulder, and 

3 



4 Memories and Pictures 

you detect the soft bulginess of wet fish about his 
clothing, and perhaps the tail of a big one emerg- 
ing from his pocket. Then it seems almost as if 
these were things that had really happened, and of 
which you yourself were a great part. 

Now this was the way in which the boy came into 
possession of his rod. He was by nature and hered- 
ity one of those predestined anglers whom Izaak 
Walton tersely describes as *'born so." His earliest 
passion was fishing. His favorite passage in Holy 
Writ was that place where Simon Peter throws a 
line into the sea and pulls out a great fish at the first 
cast. 

But hitherto his passion had been indulged under 
difficulties — with improvised apparatus of cut poles, 
and flabby pieces of string, and bent pins, which 
always failed to hold the biggest fish; or perhaps 
with borrowed tackle, dangling a fat worm in vain 
before the noses of the staring, supercilious sunfish 
that poised themselves in the clear water around the 
Lake House dock at Lake George; or, at best, on 
picnic parties across the lake, marred by the humili- 
ating presence of nurses, and disturbed by the obsti- 
nate refusal of old Horace, the boatman, to believe 
that the boy could bait his own hook, but sometimes 
crowned with the delight of bringing home a whole 
basketful of yellow perch and goggle-eyes. Of 
nobler sport with game fish, like the vaulting sal- 
mon and the merry, pugnacious trout, as yet the boy 
had only dreamed. But he had heard that there 
were such fish in the streams that flowed down from 



A Boy and a Rod 5 

the mountains around Lake George, and he was at 
the happy age when he could beHeve anything — if 
it was sufficiently interesting. 

There was one little river, and only one, within 
his knowledge and the reach of his short legs. It 
was a tiny, lively rivulet that came out of the woods 
about half a mile away from the hotel, and ran 
down eater-cornered through a sloping meadow, 
crossing the road under a flat bridge of boards, 
just beyond the root-beer shop at the lower end of 
the village. It seemed large enough to the boy, and 
he had long had his eye upon it as a fitting theatre 
for the beginning of a real angler's life. Those 
rapids, those falls, those deep, whirling pools with 
beautiful foam on them like soft, white custard, 
were they not such places as the trout loved to 
hide in? 

You can see the long hotel piazza, with the gos- 
sipy groups of wooden chairs standing vacant in 
the early afternoon ; for the grown-up people are 
dallying with the ultimate nuts and raisins of their 
mid-day dinner. A villainous clatter of innumer- 
able little vegetable-dishes comes from the open win- 
dows of the pantry as the boy steals past the kitchen 
end of the house, with Horace's lightest bamboo 
pole over his shoulder, and a little brother in skirts 
and short white stockings tagging along behind him. 

When they come to the five-rail fence where the 
brook runs out of the field, the question is, Over 
or under ? The lowlier method seems safer for the 
little brother, as well as less conspicuous for per- 



6 Memories and Pictures 

sons who desire to avoid publicity until their enter- 
prise has achieved success. So they crawl beneath 
a bend in the lowest rail — only tearing one tiny 
three-cornered hole in a jacket, and making some 
juicy green stains on the white stockings — and 
emerge with suppressed excitement in the field of 
the cloth of buttercups and daisies. 

What an afternoon — how endless and yet how 
swift! What perilous efforts to leap across the 
foaming stream at its narrowest points ; what es- 
capes from quagmires and possible quicksands ; 
what stealthy creeping through the grass to the 
edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of the 
line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting for 
a bite, until the restless little brother, prowling 
about below, discovers that the hook is not in the 
water at all, but lying on top of a dry stone; 
thereby proving that patience is not the only virtue, 
or, at least, that it does a better business when it 
has a small vice of impatience in partnership with it ! 

How tired the adventurers grow as the day wears 
away; and as yet they have taken nothing! But 
their strength and courage return as if by magic 
when there tomes a surprising twitch at the line 
in a shallow, unpromising rapid, and with a jerk 
of the pole a small, wiggling fish is whirled through 
the air and landed thirty feet back in the meadow. 

"For pity's sake, don't lose him ! There he is 
among the roots of the blue flag." 

"I've got him ! How cold he is — how slippery — 
how pretty! Just like a piece of rainbow!" 



A Boy and a Rod 7 

"Do you see the red spots ? Did you notice how- 
gamy he was, Httle brother; how he played? It 
is a trout, for sure ; a real trout, almost as long as 
your hand." 

So the two lads tramp along up the stream, 
chattering as if there were no rubric of silence in 
the angler's code. Presently another simple-minded 
troutling falls a victim to their unpremeditated art ; 
and they begin already, being human, to wish for 
something larger. In the very last pool that they 
dare attempt — a dark hole under a steep bank, 
where the brook issues from the woods — the boy 
drags out the hoped-for prize, a splendid trout, 
longer than a new lead-pencil. But he feels sure 
that there must be another, even larger, in the same 
place. He swings his line out carefully over the 
water, and just as he is about to drop it in, the little 
brother, perched on the sloping brink, slips on the 
smooth pine-needles, and goes sliddering down into 
the pool up to his waist. How he weeps with dis- 
may, and how funnily his dress sticks to him as 
he crawls out! But his grief is soon assuaged by 
the privilege of carrying the trout strung on an 
alder twig; and it is a happy, muddy, proud pair 
of urchins that climb over the fence out of the field 
of triumph at the close of the day. 

What does the father say, as he meets them in 
the road? Is he frowning or smiHng under that 
big brown beard ? You cannot be quite sure. But 
one thing is clear: he is as much elated over the 
capture of the real trout as anyone. He is ready 



8 Memories and Pictures 

to deal mildly with a little irregularity for the sake 
of encouraging pluck and perseverance. He makes 
the boy feel that running away with his little brother 
to go fishing is an offence which must never be 
repeated, and then promises him a new fishing-rod, 
all his own, if he will always ask leave before he 
goes out to use it. 

The arrival of the rod, in four joints, with an 
extra tip, a brass reel, and the other luxuries for 
which a true angler would willingly exchange the 
necessaries of life, marked a new epoch in the boy's 
career. One of the first events that followed was 
the purchase of a pair of high rubber boots. In- 
serted in this armor of modern infantry, and trans- 
figured with delight, the boy clumped through all 
the little rivers within a circuit of ten miles from 
Caldwell, and began to learn by parental example 
the yet unmastered art of complete angling. 

But because some of the streams were deep and 
strong, and his legs were short and slender, and 
his ambition was even taller than his boots, the 
father would sometimes take him up pickaback, 
and wade along carefully through the perilous places 
— which are often, in this world, the very places one 
longs to fish in. So, in your remembrance, you can 
see the little rubber boots sticking out under the 
father's arms, and the rod projecting over his head, 
and the bait dangling down unsteadily into the deep 
holes, and the delighted boy hooking and playing 
and basketing his trout high in the air. 



A Boy and a Rod 9 

II 

The promotion from all-day picnics to a two 
weeks' camping-trip is like going from school to 
college. By this time a natural process of evolu- 
tion has raised the first rod to something lighter 
and more flexible — a fly-rod, so to speak, but not 
a bigoted one — just a serviceable, unprejudiced arti- 
cle, not above using any kind of bait that may be 
necessary to catch the fish. The father has received 
the new title of "governor," indicating not less, but 
more authority, and has called in new instructors 
to carry on the boy's education : real Adirondack 
guides — old Sam Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the 
last and laziest of the Saranac Indians. Better men 
will be discovered for later trips, but none more 
amusing, and none whose wood-craft seems more 
wonderful than that of this queerly matched team, 
as they make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm 
on the shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of 
the tents is a lesson in architecture, the building of 
the camp-fire a victory over damp nature, and the 
supper of potatoes and bacon and fried trout a 
veritable triumph of culinary art. 

At midnight the rain is pattering persistently on 
the canvas; the front flaps are closed and tied to- 
gether; the lingering fire shines through them and 
sends vague shadows wavering up and down; the 
governor is rolled up in his blankets, sound asleep. 
It is a very long night for the boy. 

What is that rustling noise outside the tent? 



lO Me7nories and Pictures 

Probably some small creature, a squirrel or a rab- 
bit. Rabbit stew would be good for breakfast. But 
it sounds louder now, almost loud enough to be a 
fox; there are no wolves left in the Adirondacks, 
or at least only a very few. That is certainly quite 
a heavy footstep prowling around the provision- 
box. Could it be a panther — they step very softly 
for their size — or a bear, perhaps? Sam Dunning 
told about catching one in a trap just below here. 
(Ah, my boy, you will soon learn that there is no 
spot in all the forests created by a bountiful Provi- 
dence so poor as to be without its bear story.) 
Where was the rifle put? There it is, at the foot 
of the tent-pole. Wonder if it is loaded? 

"Waugh-ho ! Waugh-ho-o-o-o 1" 

The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, 
and peeps out between the tent-flaps; There sits 
Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree by the fire, 
with his head thrown back and a bottle poised at 
his mouth. His lonely eye is cocked up at a great 
horned owl on the branch above him. Again the 
sudden voice breaks out: 

'Who-o! whoo! whoo cooks for you all ?" 

Enos puts the bottle down, with a grunt, and 
creeps off to his tent. 

*'De debbil in dat owl," he mutters. "How he 
know I cook for dis camp ? How he know 'bout dat 
bottle? Ugh!" 

There are hundreds of pictures that flash into 
light as the boy goes on his course, year after year, 
through the woods. There is the luxurious camp 



A Boy and a Rod il 

on Tupper's Lake, with its log cabins in the spruce- 
grove, and its regiment of hungry men who ate 
almost a deer a day; and there is the little bark 
shelter on the side of Mount Marcy, where the gov- 
ernor and the boy, with baskets full of trout from 
the Opalescent River, are spending the night, with 
nothing but a fire to keep them warm. There is 
the North Bay at Moosehead, with Joe La Croix 
(one more Frenchman who thinks he looks like 
Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside his canoe, and 
only reconciled by his vanity to the wasteful pas- 
time of taking photographs while the big fish are 
rising gloriously out at the end of the point. There 
is the small spring-hole beside the Saranac River, 
where Pliny Robbins and the boy caught twenty- 
three noble trout, weighing from one to three pounds 
apiece, in the middle of a hot August afternoon, and 
hid themselves in the bushes whenever they heard 
a party coming down the river, because they did not 
care to attract company; and there are the Middle 
Falls, where the governor stood on a long spruce 
log, taking two-pound fish with the fly, and stepping 
out at every cast a little nearer to the end of the 
log, until it slowly tipped with him, and he settled 
down into the river. 

Among such scenes as these the boy pursued his 
education, learning many things that are not taught 
in colleges ; learning to take the weather as it comes, 
wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good or bad; 
learning that a meal which is scanty fare for one 
becomes a banquet for two — provided the other is 



12 Memories and Pictures 

the right person; learning that there is some skill 
in everything, even in digging bait, and that what 
is called luck consists chiefly in having your tackle 
in good order; learning that a man can be just as 
happy in a log shanty as in a brownstone mansion, 
and that the very best pleasures are those that do 
not leave a bad taste in the mouth. And in all this 
the governor was his best teacher and his closest 
comrade. 



LITTLE RIVERS 

A RIVER is the most human and companionable of 
all inanimate things. It has a life, a character, a 
voice of its own, and is as full of good fellowship as 
a sugar-maple is of sap. It can talk in various 
tones, loud or low, and of many subjects, grave and 
gay. Under favorable circumstances it will even 
make a shift to sing, not in a fashion that can be 
reduced to notes and set down in black and white on 
a sheet of paper, but in a vague, refreshing manner, 
and to a wandering air that goes 

" Over the hills and far away." 

For real company and friendship, there is noth- 
ing outside of the animal kingdom that is com- 
parable to a river. 

I will admit that a very good case can be made 
out in favor of some other objects of natural affec- 
tion. Trees seem to come very close to our life. 
They are often rooted in our richest feelings, and 
our sweetest memories, like birds, build nests in 
their branches. I remember, the last time that I 
saw James Russell Lowell (only a few weeks before 
his musical voice was hushed), he walked out with 
me into the quiet garden at Elmwood to say good- 

13 



14 Memories and Pictures 

by. There was a great horse-chestnut tree beside 
the house, towering above the gable, and covered 
with blossoms from base to summit — a pyramid of 
green supporting a thousand smaller pyramids of 
white. The poet looked up at it with his gray, pain- 
furrowed face, and laid his trembling hand upon the 
trunk. 'T planted the nut," said he, "from which 
this tree grew; and my father was with me and 
showed me how to plant it." 

Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of 
tree-worship. But when I can go where I please 
and do what I like best, my feet turn not to a tree, 
but to the bank of a river, for there the musings of 
solitude find a friendly accompaniment, and human 
intercourse is purified and sweetened by the flow- 
ing, murmuring water. It is by a river that I 
would choose to make love, and to revive old friend- 
ships, and to play with the children, and to confess 
my faults, and to escape from vain, selfish desires, 
and to cleanse my mind from all the false and fool- 
ish things that mar the joy and peace of living. 
Like David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks. 
There is wisdom in the advice of Seneca, who says, 
"Where a spring rises, or a river flows, there 
should we build altars and offer sacrifices." 

Every river that flows is good, and has some- 
thing worthy to be loved. But those that we love 
most are always the ones that we have known best 
— the stream that ran before our father's door, the 
current on which we ventured our first boat or cast 
our first fly, the brook on whose banks we first 



Little Rivers 15 

picked the twin-flower of young love. I am all for 
the little rivers. Let those who will, chant in heroic 
verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and 
Niagara, but my prose shall flow — or straggle along 
at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to 
attain — in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and 
Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, 
of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River. 

I will set my affections upon rivers that are not 
too great for intimacy. And if by chance any of 
these little ones have also become famous, like the 
Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at least 
will praise them, because they are still at heart little 
rivers. 

The real way to know a little river is not to 
glance at it here or there in the course of a hasty 
journey, nor to become acquainted with it after it 
has been partly civilized and spoiled by too close 
contact with the works of man. You must go to 
its native haunts ; you must see it in youth and free- 
dom; you must accommodate yourself to its pace, 
and give yourself to its influence, and follow its 
meanderings whithersoever they may lead you. 

Now, of this pleasant pastime there are three 
principal forms. You may go as a walker, taking 
the riverside path, or making a way for yourself 
through the tangled thickets or across the open 
meadows. You may go as a sailer, launching your 
light canoe on the swift current and committing 
yourself for a day, or a week, or a month, to the 
delightful uncertainties of a voyage through the 



1 6 Memories and Pictures 

forest. You may go as a wader, stepping into the 
stream and going down with it, through rapids and 
shallows and deeper pools, until you come to the 
end of your courage and the daylight. Of these 
three ways I know not which is best. But in all of 
them the essential thing is that you must be will- 
ing and glad to be led; you must take the little 
river for your guide, philosopher, and friend. 

And what a good guidance it gives you. How 
cheerfully it lures you on into the secrets of field 
and wood, and brings you acquainted with the birds 
and the flowers. The stream can show you, better 
than any other teacher, how nature works her en- 
chantments with color and music. 

Go out to the Beaverkill 

" In the tassel-time of spring," 

and follow its brimming waters through the bud- 
ding forests, to that corner which we call the 
Painter's Camp. See how the banks are all enam- 
elled with the pale hepatica, the painted trillium, 
and the delicate pink-veined spring beauty. A little 
later in the year, when the ferns are uncurling their 
long fronds, the troops of blue and white violets will 
come dancing down to the edge of the stream, and 
creep venturously out to the very end of that long, 
moss-covered log in the water. Before these have 
vanished, the yellow crow-foot and the cinquefoil 
will appear, followed by the star-grass and the loose- 
strife and the golden St. John's-wort. Then the 
unseen painter begins to mix the royal color on his 



Little Rivers 17 

palette, and the red of the bee-balm catches your 
eye. If you are lucky, you may find, in midsummer, 
a slender fragrant spike of the purple-fringed orchis, 
and you cannot help finding the universal self-heal. 
Yellow returns in the drooping flowers of the jewel- 
weed, and blue repeats itself in the trembling hare- 
bells, and scarlet is glorified in the flaming robe of 
the cardinal-flower. Later still, the summer closes 
in a splendor of bloom, with gentians and asters and 
golden-rod. 

You never get so close to the birds as when you 
are wading quietly down a little river, casting your 
fly deftly under the branches for the wary trout, 
but ever on the lookout for all the various pleasant 
things that nature has to bestow upon you. Here 
you shall come upon the cat-bird at her morning 
bath, and hear her sing, in a clump of pussy- 
willows, that low, tender, confidential song which 
she keeps for the hours of domestic intimacy. The 
spotted sandpiper will run along the stones before 
you, crying, "Wet-feet, wet-feet T and bowing and 
teetering in the friendliest manner, as if to show 
you the way to the best pools. In the thick branches 
of the hemlocks that stretch across the stream, the 
tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred colors, chirp 
and twitter confidingly above your head; and the 
Maryland yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes 
like a little gleam of sunlight, calls "Witchery, 
witchery, witchery \" That plaintive, forsaken, per- 
sistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday 
silence, comes from the wood-pewee, drooping upon 



1 8 Memories and Pictures 

the bough of some high tree, and complaining, Uke 
Mariana in the moated grange, "Weary, weary, 
weary I" 

When the stream runs out into the old clearing, 
or down through the pasture, you find other and 
livelier birds — the robin, with his sharp, saucy call 
and breathless, merry warble; the bluebird, with 
his notes of pure gladness, and the oriole, with his 
wild, flexible whistle ; the chewink, bustling about 
in the thicket, talking to his sweetheart in French, 
"Cherie, cheriel" and the song-sparrow, perched on 
his favorite limb of a young maple, close beside 
the water, and singing happily, through sunshine 
and through rain. This is the true bird of the 
brook, after all: the winged spirit of cheerfulness 
and contentment, the patron saint of little rivers, 
the fisherman's friend. He seems to enter into your 
sport with his good wishes, and for an hour at a 
time, while you are trying every fly in your book, 
from a black gnat to a white miller, to entice the 
crafty old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, 
the song-sparrow, close above you, will be chant- 
ing patience and encouragement. And when at last 
success crowns your endeavor, and the party-colored 
prize is glittering in your net, the bird on the bough 
breaks out in an ecstasy of congratulation : "Catch 
'im, catch 'im, catch 'im; oh, what a pretty fellow! 
sweet r 

There are other birds that seem to have a very 
different temper. The blue- jay sits high up in the 
withered pine-tree, bobbing up and down, and call- 



Little Rivers 19 

ing to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness, 
"Salute-her, salute-her/' but when you come in sight 
he flies away with a harsh cry of ''Thief, thief, thief T 
The kingfisher, ruffling his crest in soHtary pride 
on the end of a dead branch, darts down the stream 
at your approach, winding up his reel angrily as 
if he despised you for interrupting his fishing. And 
the cat-bird, that sang so charmingly while she 
thought herself unobserved, now tries to scare you 
away by screaming ''Snake, snake T 

As evening draws near, and the light beneath 
the trees grows yellower, and the air is full of filmy 
insects out for their last dance, the voice of the 
little river becomes louder and more distinct. The 
true poets have often noticed this apparent increase 
in the sound of flowing waters at nightfall. Gray, 
in one of his letters, speaks of ''hearing the mur- 
mur of many waters not audible in the daytime." 
Wordsworth repeats the same thought almost in 
the same words: 

" A soft and lulling sound is heard 
Of streams inaudible by day." 

And Tennyson, in the valley of Cauteretz, tells of 
the river 

" Deepening his voice with deepening of the night." 

It is in this mystical hour that you will hear the 
most celestial and entrancing of all bird-notes, the 
songs of the thrushes — the hermit, and the wood- 
thrush, and the veery. Sometimes, but not often, 



20 Memories and Pictures 

you will see the singers. I remember once, at the 
close of a beautiful day's fishing on the Swiftwater, 
I came out, just after sunset, into a little open space 
in an elbow of the stream. It was still early spring, 
and the leaves were tiny. On the top of a small 
sumac, not thirty feet away from me, sat a veery. 
I could see the pointed spots upon his breast, the 
swelling of his white throat, and the sparkle of his 
eyes, as he poured his whole heart into a long liquid 
chant, the clear notes rising and falling, echoing 
and interlacing in endless curves of sound. Other 
bird-songs can be translated into words, but not 
this. There is no interpretation. It is music — as 
Sidney Lanier defines it, 

" Love in search of a word." 

Little rivers have small responsibilities. They 
are not expected to bear huge navies on their breast 
or supply a hundred thousand horse-power to the 
factories of a monstrous town. Neither do you 
come to them hoping to draw out Leviathan with a 
hook. It is enough if they run a harmless, amiable 
course, and keep the groves and fields green and 
fresh along their banks, and offer a happy alterna- 
tion of nimble rapids and quiet pools, 

" With here and there a lusty trout, 
And here and there a grayling." 

When you set out to explore one of these minor 
streams in your canoe, you have no intention of 



Little Rivers 21 

epoch-making discoveries or thrilling and world- 
famous adventures. You float placidly down the 
long still waters, and make your way patiently 
through the tangle of fallen trees that block the 
stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your 
boat around the larger ones, with no loftier ambi- 
tion than to reach a good camp-ground before dark 
and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly, "with- 
out offence to God or man." It is an agreeable 
frame of mind for one who has done his fair share 
of work in the world, and is not inclined to grumble 
at his wages. And I suspect there are many tem- 
pers and attitudes, often called virtuous, in which 
the human spirit appears to less advantage in the 
sight of Heaven. 



WOOD-MAGIC 

There are three vines that belong to the ancient 
forest. Elsewhere they will not grow, though the 
soil prepared for them be never so rich, the shade 
of the arbor built for them never so closely and 
cunningly woven. Their delicate, thread-like roots 
take no hold upon the earth tilled and troubled by 
the fingers of man. The fine sap that steals through 
their long, slender limbs pauses and fails when they 
are watered by human hands. Silently the secret 
of their life retreats and shrinks away and hides 
itself. 

But in the woods, where falling leaves and 
crumbling tree-trunks and wilting ferns have been 
moulded by Nature into a deep, brown humus, clean 
and fragrant — in the woods, where the sunlight fil- 
ters green and golden through interlacing branches, 
and where pure moisture of distilling rains and 
melting snows is held in treasury by never-failing 
banks of moss — under the verdurous flood of the 
forest, like sea-weeds under the ocean waves, these 
three little creeping vines put forth their hands with 
joy, and spread over rock and hillock and twisted 
tree-root and mouldering log, in cloaks and scarves 
and wreaths of tiny evergreen, glossy leaves. 

22 



Wood-Magic 23 

One of them is adorned with white pearls sprin- 
kled lightly over its robe of green. This is Snow- 
berry, and if you eat of it you will grow wise in the 
wisdom of flowers. You will know where to find 
the yellow violet, and the wake-robin, and the pink 
lady-slipper, and the scarlet sage, and the fringed 
gentian. You will understand how the buds trust 
themselves to the spring in their unfolding, and how 
the blossoms trust themselves to the winter in their 
withering, and how the busy hands of Nature are 
ever weaving the beautiful garment of life out of 
the strands of death, and nothing is lost that yields 
itself to her quiet handling. 

Another of the vines of the forest is called Par- 
tridge-berry. Rubies are hidden among its foliage, 
and if you eat of this fruit you will grow wise in 
the wisdom of birds. You will know where the 
oven-bird secretes her nest, and where the wood- 
cock dances in the air at night; the drumming-log 
of the ruffed grouse will be easy to find, and you 
will see the dark lodges of the evergreen thickets 
inhabited by hundreds of warblers. There will be 
no dead silence for you in the forest any longer, 
but you will hear sweet and delicate voices on every 
side, voices that you know and love ; you will catch 
the key-note of the silver flute of the wood-thrush, 
and the silver harp of the veery, and the silver bells 
of the hermit; and something in your heart will 
answer to them all. In the frosty stillness of Octo- 
ber nights you will see the airy tribes flitting across 
the moon, following the secret call that guides them 



24 Memories and Pictures 

southward. In the calm brightness of winter sun- 
shine, fining sheltered copses with warmth and 
cheer, you will watch the lingering bluebirds and 
robins and song-sparrows playing at summer, while 
the chickadees and the j uncos and the cross-bills 
make merry in the wind-swept fields. In the lucent 
mornings of April you will hear your old friends 
coming home to you, Phoebe, and oriole, and yel- 
low-throat, and red-wing, and tanager, and cat- 
bird. When they call to you and greet you, you will 
understand that Nature knows a secret for which 
man has never found a word — the secret that tells 
itself in song. 

The third of the forest-vines is Wood-Magic. It 
bears neither flower nor fruit. Its leaves are hardly 
to be distinguished from the leaves of the other 
vines. Perhaps they are a little rounder than the 
Snowberry's, a little more pointed than the Par- 
tridge-berry's ; sometimes you might mistake them 
for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of 
warning have been written upon them. If you find 
them, it is your fortune; if you taste them, it is 
your fate. 

For as you browse your way through the forest, 
nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young win- 
ter-green, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam-fir, a 
twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves 
of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know 
what you have done, but the enchantment of the 
tree-land will enter your heart and the charm of the 
wildwood will flow through your veins. 



Wood-Magic 25 

You will never get away from it. The sighing of 
the wind through the pine-trees and the laughter of 
the stream in its rapids will sound through all your 
dreams. On beds of silken softness you will long 
for the sleep-song of whispering leaves above your 
head and the smell of a couch of balsam-boughs. 
At tables spread with dainty fare you will be hun- 
gry for the joy of the hunt and for the angler's 
sylvan feast. In proud cities you will weary for 
the sight of a mountain trail ; in great cathedrals 
you will think of the long, arching aisles of the 
woodland; and in the noisy solitude of crowded 
streets you will hone after the friendly forest. 

This is what will happen to you if you eat the 
leaves of that little vine, Wood-Magic. 



CAMPING OUT 



THE GUIDES 



They are all French Canadians of unmixed blood, 
descendants of the men who came to New France 
with Champlain, three centuries ago. Ferdinand 
Larouche, our head guide, is a stocky little fel- 
low, a "sawed off" man, not more than five feet 
two inches tall, but every inch of him is pure 
vim. He can carry a big canoe or a hundred- 
weight of camp stuff over a mile portage without 
stopping to take breath. He is a capital canoe- 
man, with prudence enough to balance his cour- 
age, and a fair cook, with plenty of that quality 
which is wanting in the ordinary cook of commerce 
— good humor. Always joking, whistling, singing, 
he brings the atmosphere of a perpetual holiday 
along with him. His weather-worn coat covers a 
heart full of music. He has two talents which make 
him a marked man among his comrades: he plays 
the fiddle to the delight of all the balls and weddings 
through the country-side, and he speaks English to 
the admiration and envy of the other guides. But 
like all men of genius, he is modest about his accom- 
26 



Camping Out 27 

plishments. "H'l not spik good h'English — h'only 
for camp — fishin', cookin', dhe voyage — h'all dhose 
t'ings." The aspirates puzzle him. He can get 
through a slash of fallen timber more easily than a 
sentence full of *'this" and "that." Sometimes he 
expresses his meaning queerly. He was teUing me 
once about his farm, "not far off here, in dhe Riviere 
ati Cochon, river of dhe pig, you call 'im. HT am 
a widow, got five sons, t'ree of dhem are girls." 
But he usually ends by falling back into French, 
which, he assures you, you speak to perfection, 
"much better than the Canadians ; the French of 
Paris, in short — M'sieu' has been in Paris?" Such 
courtesy is born in the blood, and is irresistible. 
You cannot help returning the compliment and as- 
suring him that his English is remarkable, good 
enough for all practical purposes, better than any 
of the other guides can speak. And so it is. 

His brother Fran9ois is a little taller, a little thin- 
ner, and considerably quieter than Ferdinand. He 
laughs loyally at his brother's jokes, and sings the 
response to his songs, and wields a good second 
paddle in the canoe. 

Jean — commonly called Johnny — Morel is a tall, 
strong man of fifty, with a bushy red beard that 
would do credit to a pirate. But when you look at 
him more closely, you see that he has a clear, kind 
blue eye and a most honest, friendly face under his 
slouch hat. He has travelled these woods and 
waters for thirty years, so that he knows the way 
through them by a thousand familiar signs, as well 



28 Memories and Pictures 

as you know the streets of the city. He is our path- 
finder. 

The bow paddle in his canoe is held by his son 
Joseph, a lad not quite fifteen, but already as tall 
and almost as strong as a man. "He is yet of the 
youth," said Johnny, "and he knows not the affairs 
of the camp. This trip is for him the first — it is his 
school — but I hope he will content you. He is good, 
M'sieu', and of the strongest for his age. I have 
educated already two sons in the bow of my canoe. 
The oldest has gone to P ennsylvanie ; he peels the 
bark there for the tanning of leather. The second 
had the misfortune of breaking his leg, so that he 
can no longer kneel to paddle. He has descended 
to the making of shoes. Joseph is my third pupil. 
And I have still a younger one at home waiting to 
come into my school." 

A touch of family life like that is always refresh- 
ing, and doubly so in the wilderness. For what is 
fatherhood at its best, everywhere, but the training 
of good men to take the teacher's place when his 
work is done? Some day, when Johnny's rheuma- 
tism has made his joints a little stiff er and his eyes 
have lost something of their keenness, he will be 
wielding the second paddle in the boat, and going 
out only on the short and easy trips. It will be 
young Joseph that steers the canoe through the 
dangerous places, and carries the heaviest load 
over the portages, and leads the way on the long 
journeys. 



Camping Out 29 

II 

RUNNING THE RAPIDS 

We embarked our tents and blankets, our pots 
and pans, and bags of flour and potatoes and bacon 
and other delicacies, our rods and guns, and last, 
but not least, our axes (without which man in the 
woods is a helpless creature), in two birch-bark 
canoes, and went flying down the Saguenay. 

It is a wonderful place, this outlet of Lake St. 
John. All the floods of twenty rivers are gathered 
here, and break forth through a net of islands in a 
double stream. The southern outlet is small, and 
flows somewhat more quietly at first. But the north- 
ern outlet is a huge confluence and tumult of waters. 
You see the set of the tide far out in the lake, slid- 
ing, driving, crowding, hurrying in with smooth 
currents and swirling eddies toward the corner of 
escape. By the rocky cove where the Island House 
peers out through the fir-trees, the current already 
has a perceptible slope. It begins to boil over hid- 
den stones in the middle, and gurgles at projecting 
points of rock. A mile farther down there is an 
islet where the stream quickens, chafes, and breaks 
into a rapid. Behind the islet it drops down in three 
or four foaming steps. On the outside it makes one 
long, straight rush into a line of white-crested 
standing waves. 

As we approached, the steersman in the first canoe 
stood up to look over the course. The sea was high. 



30 Memories and Pictures 

Was it too high? The canoes were heavily loaded. 
Could they leap the waves ? There was a quick talk 
among the guides as we slipped along, undecided 
which way to turn. Then the question seemed 
to settle itself, as most of these woodland questions 
do, as if some silent force of Nature had the casting- 
vote. ''Let's try it!" cried Ferdinand, "Come on!" 
In a moment we were sliding down the smooth 
back of the rapid, directly toward the first big 
wave. The rocky shore went by us like a dream; 
we could feel the motion of the earth whirling 
around with us. The crest of the billow in front 
curled above the bow of the canoe. ''Stop! Stop! 
Slowly!" A swift stroke of the paddle checked 
the canoe, quivering and prancing like a horse sud- 
denly reined in. The wave ahead, as if surprised, 
sank and flattened for a second. The canoe leaped 
through the edge of it, swerved to one side, and 
ran gayly down along the fringe of the line of bil- 
lows, into quieter water. 

Our guides began to shout, and joke each other, 
and praise their canoes. 

"You grazed that villain rock at the corner," said 
Jean; "didn't you know where it was?" 

"Yes, after I touched it," cried Ferdinand; "but 
you took in a bucket of water, and I suppose your 
m'sieu' is sitting on a piece of the river. Is it 
not?" 

This seemed to us all a very merry jest. It is 
one of the charms of life in the woods that it brings 
back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the 




DOWN THE PERIBONCA 



Camping Out 31 

youth of the world. Plain fun, like plain food, tastes 
good out-of-doors. 

The first little rapid was only the beginning. 
Half a mile below we could see the river disappear 
between two points of rock. There was a roar of 
conflict, and a golden mist hanging in the air, like 
the smoke of battle. All along the place where the 
river sank from sight, dazzling heads of foam were 
flashing up and falling back, as if a horde of water- 
sprites were vainly trying to fight their way up to 
the lake. It was the top of a wild succession of falls 
and pools where no boat could live for a moment. 
We ran down toward it as far as the water served, 
and then turned off among the rocks on the left 
hand, to take the portage. 

These portages are among the troublesome de- 
lights of a journey in the wilderness. To the guides 
they mean hard work, for everything, including the 
boats, must be carried on their backs. The march 
of the canoes on dry land is a curious sight. But 
the sportsman carries nothing, except, perhaps, his 
gun, or his rod, or his photographic camera; and 
so for him the portage is only a pleasant opportunity 
to stretch his legs, cramped by sitting in the canoe, 
and to renew his acquaintance with the pretty things 
that are in the woods. 

We sauntered along the trail as if school were 
out and would never keep again. How fresh and 
tonic the forest seemed as we plunged into its bath 
of shade. There were our old friends the cedars, 
with their roots twisted across the path ; and the 



32 Memories and Pictures 

white birches, so trim in youth and so shaggy in 
age; and the sociable spruces and balsams, crowd- 
ing close together, and interlacing their arms over- 
head. There were the little springs, trickling 
through the moss ; and the slippery logs laid across 
the marshy places; and the fallen trees, cut in two 
and pushed aside — for this was a much-travelled 
portage. 

Around the open spaces, the tall meadow-rue 
stood dressed in robes of fairy white and green. 
The blue banners of the Heur-de-lis were planted 
beside the springs. In shady corners, deeper in 
the wood, the fragrant pyrola lifted its scape of 
clustering bells, like a lily of the valley wandered 
to the forest. When we came to the end of the 
portage, among the loose grasses by the water-side 
we found the exquisite purple spikes of the lesser 
fringed orchis, loveliest and most ethereal of all 
the woodland flowers save one. 

We launched our canoes again on the great pool 
at the foot of the first fall — a broad sweep of water 
a mile long and half a mile wide, full of eddies 
and strong currents, and covered with drifting 
foam. There was the old camp-ground on the 
point where I had tented so often. And there were 
the big fish, showing their back fins as they circled 
lazily around in the eddies, as if they were waiting 
to play with us. But the goal of our day's journey 
was miles away, and we swept along with the 
stream. 



Camping Out 33 

III 

THE TENT 

Men may say what they will in praise of their 
houses, but, for our part, we are agreed that there 
is nothing to be compared with a tent. It is the 
most venerable and aristocratic form of human 
habitation. Abraham and Sarah lived in it, and 
shared its hospitality with angels. It is exempt 
from the base tyranny of the plumber, the paper- 
hanger, and the gas-man. It is not immovably 
bound to one dull spot of earth by the chains of a 
cellar and a system of water-pipes. It has a noble 
freedom of locomotion. It follows the wishes of 
its inhabitants, and goes with them, a travelling 
home, as the spirit moves them to explore the 
wilderness. At their pleasure, new beds of wild 
flowers surround it, new plantations of trees over- 
shadow it, and new avenues of shining water lead 
to its ever-open door. What the tent lacks in 
luxury it makes up in liberty: or rather let us say 
that liberty itself is the greatest luxury. 

Another thing is worth remembering — a family 
which lives in a tent never can have a skeleton in 
the closet. 

But it must not be supposed that every spot in 
the woods is suitable for a camp, or that a good 
tenting-ground can be chosen without knowledge 
and forethought. One of the requisites, indeed, 
is to be found everywhere in the St. John region; 



34 Memories and Pictures 

for all the lakes and rivers are full of clear, cool 
water, and the traveller does not need to search 
for a spring. But it is always necessary to look 
carefully for a bit of smooth ground on the shore, 
far enough above the water to be dry, and slightly 
sloping, so that the head of the bed may be higher 
than the foot. Above all, it must be free from big 
stones and serpentine roots of trees. A root that 
looks no bigger than an inch-worm in the daytime 
assumes the proportions of a boa-constrictor at 
midnight — when you find it under your hip-bone. 
There should also be plenty of evergreens near at 
hand for the beds. Spruce will answer at a pinch ; 
it has an aromatic smell; but it is too stiff and 
humpy. Hemlock is smoother and more flexible; 
but the spring soon wears out of it. The balsam-fir, 
with its elastic branches and thick flat needles, is 
the best of all. A bed of these boughs a foot 
deep is softer than a mattress and as fragrant as a 
thousand Christmas-trees. Two things more are 
needed for the ideal camp-ground — an open situa- 
tion, where the breeze will drive away the flies and 
mosquitoes, and an abundance of dry firewood 
within easy reach. Yes, and a third thing must 
not be forgotten, for, says my lady Greygown : 

"I shouldn't feel at home in camp unless I could 
sit in the door of the tent and look out across 
flowing water." 

All these conditions are met in our favorite 
camping place below the first fall in the Grande 
Decharge. A rocky point juts out into the river 



Camping Out 35 

and makes a fine landing for the canoes. There 
is a dismantled fishing-cabin a few rods back in 
the woods, from which we can borrow boards for 
a table and chairs. A group of cedars on the 
lower edge of the point opens just wide enough 
to receive and shelter our tent. At a good distance 
beyond ours, the guides' tent is pitched; and the 
big camp-fire burns between the two dwellings. A 
pair of white-birches lift their leafy crowns far 
above us, and after them we name the place. 

What an admirable, lovable, and comfortable tree 
is the white-birch, the silver queen of the forest, 
beautiful to look upon and full of various uses. Its 
wood is strong to make paddles and axe handles, 
and glorious to burn, blazing up at first with a 
flashing flame, and then holding the fire in its 
glowing heart all through the night. Its bark is 
the most serviceable of all the products of the 
wilderness. In Russia, they say, it is used in tan- 
ning, and gives its subtle, sacerdotal fragrance to 
Russia leather. But here, in the woods, it serves 
more primitive ends. It can be peeled off in a huge 
roll from some giant tree and fashioned into a swift 
canoe to carry man over the waters. It can be 
cut into square sheets to roof his shanty in the 
forest. It is the paper on which he writes his 
woodland despatches, and the flexible material 
which he bends into drinking-cups of silver lined 
with gold. A thin strip of it wrapped around the 
end of a candle and fastened in a cleft stick makes 
a practicable chandelier. A basket for berries, a 



36 Memories and Pictures 

horn to call the lovelorn moose through the 
autumnal woods, a canvas on which to draw the 
outline of great and memorable fish — all these and 
many other indispensable luxuries are stored up 
for the skilful woodsman in the birch bark. 

Only do not rob or mar the tree unless you 
really need what it has to give you. Let it stand 
and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled and un- 
scarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of 
the forest temple, and the branches spread abroad 
a refuge of bright green leaves for the birds of 
the air. Nature never made a more excellent piece 
of handiwork. 



IV 

A LITTLE FISHING 

The chief occupation of our idle days was fishing. 
Above the camp spread a noble pool more than 
two miles in circumference, and diversified with 
smooth bays and whirling eddies, sand beaches and 
rocky islands. The river poured into it at the 
head, foaming and raging, and swept out of it just 
in front of our camp in a merry, musical rapid. It 
was full of fish of various kinds — long-nosed pick- 
erel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub. But the 
prince of the pool was the fighting ouananiche,* the 
land-locked salmon of St. John. 

* Pronounce " ivan-an'i-sh." 



Camping Out 37 

Every morning and evening, Greygown and I 
would go out for ouananiche, and sometimes we 
caught plenty and sometimes few, but we never 
came back without a good catch of happiness. 
There were certain places where the fish liked to 
stay. For example, we always looked for one at 
the lower corner of a big rock, very close to it, 
where he could poise himself easily on the edge 
of the strong downward stream. Another likely 
place was a straight run of water, swift, but not 
too swift, with a sunken stone in the middle. The 
ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting water. 
An even current is far more comfortable, for then 
he discovers just how much effort is needed to 
balance against it, and keeps up the movement 
mechanically, as if he were half asleep. But his 
favorite place is under one of the floating islands 
of thick foam that gather in the corners below the 
falls. The matted flakes give a grateful shelter 
from the sun, I fancy, and almost all game-fish love 
to lie in the shade; but the chief reason why the 
ouananiche haunt the drifting white mass is be- 
cause it is full of flies and gnats, beaten down by 
the spray of the cataract, and sprinkled all through 
the foam like plums in a cake. To this natural 
confection the little salmon, lurking in his corner, 
plays the part of Jack Horner all day long, and 
never wearies. 

"See that foam down below there!" said Ferdi- 
nand, as we scrambled over the huge rocks at 
the foot of the falls; "there ought to be salmon 



38 Memories and Pictures 

there." Yes, there were the sharp noses picking 
out the unfortunate insects, and the broad tails 
waving lazily through the foam as the fish turned 
in the water. At this season of the year, when 
summer is nearly ended, and every ouananiche in 
the river has tasted feathers and seen a hook, it 
is useless to attempt to delude them with the large 
gaudy flies which the fishing-tackle-maker recom- 
mends. There are only two successful methods of 
angling now. The first of these I tried, and by 
casting delicately with a tiny brown trout-fly tied 
on a gossamer strand of gut, captured a pair of 
fish weighing about three pounds each. They 
fought against the spring of the four-ounce rod 
for nearly half an hour before Ferdinand could 
slip the net around them. But there was another 
and a broader tail still waving disdainfully on the 
outer edge of the foam. ''And now," said the gal- 
lant Ferdinand, ''the turn is to madame, that she 
should prove her fortune — attend but a moment, 
madame, while I seek the bait." 

This was the second method: a grasshopper was 
attached to the hook, and casting the line well out 
across the pool, Ferdinand put the rod into Grey- 
gown's hands. She stood poised upon a pinnacle 
of rock, like patience on a monument, waiting for 
a bite. It came. There was a slow, gentle pull 
at the line, answered by a quick jerk of the rod, 
and a noble fish flashed into the air. Four pounds 
and a half at least ! He leaped again and again, 
shaking the drops from his silvery sides. He 



Camping Out 39 

rushed up the rapids as if he had determined to 
return to the lake, and down again as if he had 
changed his plans and determined to go to the 
Saguenay. He sulked in the deep water and rubbed 
his nose against the rocks. He did his best to 
treat that treacherous grasshopper as the whale 
served Jonah. But Greygown, through all her little 
screams and shouts of excitement, was steady and 
sage. She never gave the fish an inch of slack 
line ; and at last he lay glittering on the rocks, with 
the black St. Andrew's crosses clearly marked on 
his plump sides, and the iridescent spots gleaming 
on his small, shapely head. "A beauty !" cried 
Ferdinand, as he held up the fish in triumph, "and 
it is madame who has the good fortune. She 
understands well to take the large fish — is it not?" 
Greygown stepped demurely down from her pin- 
nacle, and as we drifted down the pool in the 
canoe, under the mellow evening sky, her conversa- 
tion betrayed not a trace of the pride that a vic- 
torious fisherman would have shown. On the 
contrary, she insisted that angling was an affair of 
chance — which was consoling, though I knew it was 
not altogether true — and that the smaller fish were 
just as pleasant to catch and better to eat, after all. 



40 Memories and Pictures 



MORNING AND EVENING 

Our tent is on the border of a coppice of young 
trees. It is pleasant to be awakened by a convoca- 
tion of birds at sunrise, and to watch the shadows 
of the leaves dance out upon our translucent roof 
of canvas. 

All the birds in the bush are early, but there are 
so many of them that it is difficult to believe that 
every one can be rewarded with a worm. Here in 
Canada those little people of the air who appear 
as transient guests of spring and autumn in the 
Middle States, are in their summer home and 
breeding-place. Warblers, named for the magnolia 
and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay-breasted, blue- 
backed, and black-throated, flutter and creep along 
the branches with simple lisping music. Kinglets, 
ruby-crowned and golden-crowned, tiny, brilliant 
sparks of life, twitter among the trees, breaking 
occasionally into clearer, sweeter songs. Companies 
of redpoles and cross-bills pass chirping through 
the thickets, busily seeking their food. The fear- 
less, familiar chickadee repeats his name merrily, 
while he leads his family to explore every nook 
and cranny of the wood. Cedar wax-wings, sociable 
wanderers, arrive in numerous flocks. The Cana- 
dians call them "recollets," because they wear a 
brown crest of the same color as the hoods of the 
monks who came with the first settlers to New 



Camping Out 41 

France. They are a songless tribe, although their 
quick, reiterated call as they take to flight has 
given them the name of chatterers. The beautiful 
tree-sparrows and the pine-siskins are more melodi- 
ous, and the slate-colored j uncos, flitting about the 
camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds. All these 
varied notes come and go through the tangle of 
morning dreams. And now the noisy blue- jay is 
calling ''Thief — thief — thief I" in the distance, and 
a pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson 
crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some 
family joke. But listen ! what is that harsh creak- 
ing note? It is the cry of the northern shrike, of 
whom tradition says that he catches little birds 
and impales them on sharp thorns. At the sound 
of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the 
singers vanish into thin air. The hour of music is 
over; the commonplace of day has begun. And 
there is my lady Greygown, already up and dressed, 
standing by the breakfast-table and laughing at my 
belated appearance. 

When the long, happy day is over, just before 
sundown we go for a little walk along the portage 
and up the hill behind the camp. There are 
blueberries growing abundantly among the rocks — 
huge clusters of them, bloomy and luscious as the 
grapes of Eshcol. The blueberry is Nature's com- 
pensation for the ruin of forest fires. It grows 
best where the woods have been burned away and 
the soil is too poor to raise another crop of trees. 



4^ Memories and Pictures 

And here is a bed of moss beside a dashing rivu- 
let, inviting us to rest and be thankful. Hark! 
There is a white-throated sparrow, on a little tree 
across the river, whistling his sunset song 

" In linked sweetness long drawn out." 

Down in Maine they call him the Peabody-bird, 
because his notes sound to them like Old man — 
Peabody, peahody, peahody. In New Brunswick 
the Scotch settlers say that he sings Lost — lost — 
Kennedy, kennedy, kennedy. But here in his north- 
ern home I think we can understand him better. 
He is singing again and again, with a cadence that 
never wearies, ''Sweet — sweet — Canada, cdnada, 
Canada!" The Canadians, when they came across 
the sea, remembering the nightingale of southern 
France, baptized this little gray minstrel with his 
name, and the country ballads are full of his 
praise. Every land has its nightingale, if we only 
have the heart to hear him. How distinct his voice 
is — how personal, how confidential, as if he had a 
message for us! 

There is a breath of fragrance on the cool shady 
air beside our little stream, that seems familiar. 
It is the first week of September. Can it be that 
the twin-flower of June is blooming again? Yes, 
here is the threadlike stem lifting its two frail pink 
bells above the bed of shining leaves. How dear an 
early flower seems when it comes back again and 
unfolds its beauty in a St. Martin's summer ! How 



Camping Out 43 

delicate and suggestive is the faint, magical odor! 
It is like a renewal of the dreams of youth. 

**And need we ever grow old?" asked my lady 
Greygown, as she sat that evening with the twin- 
flower on her breast, watching the stars come out 
along the edge of the cliffs, and tremble on the 
hurrying tide of the river. "Must we grow old as 
well as gray ? Is the time coming when all life will 
be commonplace and practical, and governed by a 
dull 'of course'? Shall we not always find adven- 
tures and romances, and a few blossoms returning, 
even when the season grows late?" 

"At least," I answered, "let us believe in the pos- 
sibility, for to doubt it is to destroy it. If we can 
only come back to nature together every year, and 
consider the flowers and the birds, we shall die 
young, even though we live long: we shall have a 
treasure of memories which will be like the twin- 
flower, always a double blossom on a single stem, 
and carry with us into the unseen world some- 
thing which will make it worth while to be im- 
mortal." 



THE OPEN FIRE 
I 

LIGHTING UP 

Man is the animal that has made friends with 
the fire. 

All the other creatures, in their natural state, are 
afraid of it. They look upon it with wonder and 
dismay. It fascinates them, sometimes, with its 
glittering eyes in the night. The squirrels and the 
hares come pattering softly toward it through the 
underbrush around the new camp. The deer stands 
staring into the blaze of the jack while the hunter's 
canoe creeps through the lily-pads. But the charm 
that masters them is one of dread, not of love. It is 
the witchcraft of the serpent's lambent look. When 
they know what it means, when the heat of the fire 
touches them, or even when its smell comes clearly 
to their most delicate sense, they recognize it as 
their enemy, the Wild Huntsman whose red hounds 
can follow, follow for days without wearying, 
growing stronger and more furious with every turn 
of the chase. Let but a trail of smoke drift down 
the wind across the forest, and all the game for 
miles and miles will catch the signal for fear and 
flight. 

44 



The Open Fire 45 

Many of the animals have learned how to make 
houses for themselves. The cabane of the beaver 
is a wonder of neatness and comfort, much prefer- 
able to the wigwam of his Indian hunter. The 
muskrat knows how thick and high to build the 
dome of his water-side cottage, in order to protect 
himself against the frost of the coming winter and 
the floods of the following spring. The wood- 
chuck's house has two or three doors; and the 
squirrel's dwelling is provided with a good bed and 
a convenient storehouse for nuts and acorns. The 
sportive otters have a toboggan slide in front of 
their residence; and the moose in winter make a 
"yard," where they can take exercise comfortably 
and find shelter for sleep. But there is one thing 
lacking in all these various dwellings — a fireplace. 

Man is the only creature that dares to light a 
fire and to live with it. The reason? Because he 
alone has learned how to put it out. 

It is true that two of his humbler friends have 
been converted to fire-worship. The dog and the 
cat, being half-humanized, have begun to love the 
fire. I suppose that a cat seldom comes so near to 
feeling a true sense of affection as when she has 
finished her saucer of bread and milk, and stretched 
herself luxuriously underneath the kitchen stove, 
while her faithful mistress washes up the dishes. 
As for a dog, I am sure that his admiring love 
for his master is never greater than when they come 
in together from the hunt, wet and tired, and the 
man gathers a pile of wood in front of the tent, 



46 Memories and Pictures 

touches it with a tiny magic wand, and suddenly 
the clear, consoling flame springs up, saying cheer- 
fully, "Here we are, at home in the forest; come 
into the warmth; rest, and eat, and sleep." When 
the weary, shivering dog sees this miracle, he 
knows that his master is a great man and a lord 
of things. 

After all, that is the only real open fire. Wood 
is the fuel for it. Out-of-doors is the place for it. 
A furnace is an underground prison for a toiling 
slave. A stove is a cage for a tame bird. Even a 
broad hearthstone and a pair of glittering andirons 
— the best ornament of a room — must be accepted 
as an imitation of the real thing. The veritable 
open fire is built in the open, with the whole earth 
for a fireplace and the sky for a chimney. 

To start a fire in the open is by no means as easy 
as it looks. It is one of those simple tricks that 
everyone thinks he can perform until he tries it. 
If, perhaps, you have to do it in the rain, with a 
single match, it requires no little art and skill. 

There is plenty of wood everywhere, but not a 
bit to burn. The fallen trees are water-logged. 
The dead leaves are as damp as grief. The charred 
sticks that you find in an old fireplace are ab- 
solutely incombustible. Do not trust the handful 
of withered twigs and branches that you gather 
from the spruce-trees. They seem dry, but they are 
little better for your purpose than so much asbestos. 
You make a pile of them in some apparently suit- 
able hollow, and lay a few larger sticks on top. 




"The little friendship fire." 



The Open Fire 47 

Then you hastily scratch your solitary match on 
the seat of your trousers and thrust it into the pile 
of twigs. What happens ? The wind whirls around 
in your stupid little hollow, and the blue flame of 
the sulphur spurts and sputters for an instant, and 
then goes out. Or perhaps there is a moment of 
stillness; the match flares up bravely; the nearest 
twigs catch fire, crackling and sparkling; you 
hurriedly lay on more sticks; but the fire deliber- 
ately dodges them, creeps to the corner of the pile 
where the twigs are fewest and dampest, snaps 
feebly a few times, and expires in smoke. Now 
where are you ? How far is it to the nearest match ? 
If you are wise, you will always make your fire 
before you light it. Time is never saved by doing 
a thing badly. 



II 

THE CAMP-FIRE 

In the making of fires there is as much difference 
as in the building of houses. Everything depends 
upon the purpose that you have in view. There is 
the camp-fire, and the cooking-fire, and the smudge- 
fire, and the little friendship-fire — not to speak of 
other minor varieties. Each of these has its own 
proper style of architecture, and to mix them is 
false art and poor economy. 

The object of the camp-fire is to give heat, and 



48 Memories and Pictures 

incidentally light, to your tent or shanty. You can 
hardly build this kind of a fire unless you have a 
good axe and know how to chop. For the first 
thing that you need is a solid back-log, the thicker 
the better, to hold the heat and reflect it into the 
tent. This log must not be too dry, or it will burn 
out quickly. Neither must it be too damp, else it 
will smoulder and discourage the fire. The best 
wood for it is the body of a yellow birch, and, next 
to that, a green balsam. It should be five or six feet 
long, and at least two and a half feet in diameter. 
If you cannot find a tree thick enough, cut two or 
three lengths of a smaller one ; lay the thickest log 
on the ground first, about ten or twelve feet in front 
of the tent; drive two strong stakes behind it, 
slanting a little backward; and lay the other logs 
on top of the first, resting against the stakes. 

Now you are ready for the hand-chunks, or 
andirons. These are shorter sticks of wood, eight 
or ten inches thick, laid at right angles to the back- 
log, four or five feet apart. Across these you are 
to build up the firewood proper. 

Use a dry spruce-tree, not one that has fallen, but 
one that is dead and still standing, if you want a 
lively, snapping fire. Use a hard maple or a 
hickory if you want a fire that will burn steadily 
and make few sparks. But if you like a fire to 
blaze up at first with a splendid flame, and then 
burn on with an enduring heat far into the night, 
a young white birch with the bark on is the tree 
to choose. Six or eight round sticks of this laid 



The Open Fire 49 

across the hand-chunks, with perhaps a few quar- 
terings of a larger tree, will make a glorious fire. 

But before you put these on, you must be ready 
to light up. A few splinters of dry spruce or pine 
or balsam, stood endwise against the back-log, or, 
better still, piled up in a pyramid between the hand- 
chunks; a few strips of birch bark, and one good 
match — these are all that you want. But be sure 
that your match is a good one. You would better 
see to this before you go into the brush. Your 
comfort, even your life, may depend on it. 

In the woods, the old-fashioned brimstone match 
of our grandfathers — the match with a brown head 
and a stout stick and a dreadful smell — is the best. 
But if you have only one, you would better not 
trust even that to light your fire directly. Use it 
first to touch off a roll of birch bark which you hold 
in your hand. Then, when the bark is well alight, 
crinkling and curling, push it under the heap of 
kindlings, give the flame time to take a good hold, 
and lay your wood over it, a stick at a time, until 
the whole pile is blazing. Now your fire is started. 
Your friendly little gnome with the red hair is 
ready to serve you through the night. 

He will dry your clothes if you are wet. He 
will cheer you up if you are despondent. He will 
diffuse an air of sociability through the camp, and 
draw the men together in a half circle for story- 
telling and jokes and singing. He will hold a flam- 
beau for you while you spread your blankets on the 
boughs and dress for bed. He will keep you warm 



50 Memories and Pictures 

while you sleep — at least till about three o'clock in 
the morning, when you dream that you are out 
sleighing in your pajamas, and wake up with a 
shiver. 



Ill 

THE LITTLE FRIENDSHIP-FIRE 

There are times and seasons when the angler has 
no need of the camp-fire, or the smudge-fire, or the 
cooking-fire. He sleeps in a house. His breakfast 
and dinner are cooked for him in a kitchen. He is 
in no great danger from black-flies or mosquitoes. 
All he needs now, as he sets out to spend a day on 
the Neversink, or the Willowemoc, or the Shepaug, 
or the Swiftwater, is a good lunch in his pocket, 
and a little friendship-fire to burn pleasantly beside 
him while he eats his frugal fare and prolongs his 
noonday rest. 

This form of fire does less work than any other 
in the world. Yet it is far from being useless ; and 
I, for one, should be sorry to live without it. Its 
only use is to make a visible centre of interest 
where there are two or three anglers eating their 
lunch together, or to supply a kind of companion- 
ship to a lone fisherman. It is kindled and burns 
for no other purpose than to give you the sense of 
being at home and at ease. Why the fire should 
do this, I cannot tell, but it does. 

You may build your friendship-fire in almost 



The Open Fire 51 

any way that pleases you; but this is the way in 
which you shall build it best. You have no axe, 
of course, so you must look about for the driest 
sticks that you can find. Do not seek them close 
beside the stream, for there they are likely to be 
water-soaked; but go back into the woods a bit 
and gather a good armful of fuel. Then break it, 
if you can, into lengths of about two feet, and con- 
struct your fire in the following fashion. 

Lay two sticks parallel, and put between them 
a pile of dried grass, dead leaves, small twigs, and 
the paper in which your lunch was wrapped. Then 
lay two other sticks crosswise on top of your first 
pair. Strike your match and touch your kindlings. 
As the fire catches, lay on other pairs of sticks, each 
pair crosswise to the pair that is below it, until 
you have a pyramid of flame. This is ''a Micmac 
fire" such as the Indians make in the woods. 

Now you can pull off your wading-boots and 
warm your feet at the blaze. You can toast your 
bread if you like. You can even make shift to 
broil one of your trout, fastened on the end of a 
birch twig if you have a fancy that way. When 
your hunger is satisfied, you shake out the crumbs 
for the birds and the squirrels, settle down for an 
hour's reading if you have a book in your pocket, 
or for a good talk if you have a comrade with you. 

The stream of time flows swift and smooth, by 
such a fire as this. The moments slip past un- 
heeded; the sun sinks down his western arch; the 
shadows begin to fall across the brook; it is time 



52 Memories and Pictures 

to move on for the afternoon fishing. The fire has 
almost burned out. But do not trust it too much. 
Throw some sand over it, or bring a hatful of 
water from the brook to pour on it, until you are 
sure that the last glowing ember is extinguished, 
and nothing but the black coals and the charred 
ends of the sticks are left. 

Even the little friendship-fire must keep the law 
of the bush. All lights out when their purpose is 
fulfilled! 



IV 

ALTARS OF REMEMBRANCE 

It is a question that we have often debated, in 
the informal meetings of our Petrine Club : Which 
is pleasanter — to fish an old stream or a new one? 

The younger members are all for the "fresh 
woods and pastures new." They speak of the 
delight of turning off from the high-road into some 
faintly marked trail; following it blindly through 
the forest, not knowing how far you have to go; 
hearing the voice of waters sounding through the 
woodland; leaving the path impatiently and strik- 
ing straight across the underbrush ; scrambling 
down a steep bank, pushing through a thicket of 
alders, and coming out suddenly, face to face with 
a beautiful, strange brook. It reminds you, of 
course, of some old friend. It is a little like the 



The Open Fire 53 

Beaverkill, or the Ausable, or the Gale River. And 
yet it is different. Every stream has its own char- 
acter and disposition. Your new acquaintance in- 
vites you to a day of discoveries. If the water 
is high, you will follow it down, and have easy 
fishing. If the water is low, you will go upstream, 
and fish ''fine and far-off." Every turn in the 
avenue which the little river has made for you 
opens up a new view — a rocky gorge where the 
deep pools are divided by white- footed falls; a 
lofty forest where the shadows are deep and the 
trees arch overhead; a flat, sunny stretch where 
the stream is spread out, and pebbly islands divide 
the channels, and the big fish are lurking at the 
sides in the sheltered corners under the bushes. 
From scene to scene you follow on, delighted and 
expectant, until the night suddenly drops its veil, 
and then you will be lucky if you can find your 
way home in the dark ! 

Yes, it is all very good, this exploration of new 
streams. But, for my part, I like still better to 
go back to a familiar little river, and fish or dream 
along the banks where I have dreamed and fished 
before. I know every bend and curve: the sharp 
turn, where the water runs under the roots of the 
old hemlock-tree; the snaky glen, where the alders 
stretch their arms far out across the stream ; the 
meadow reach, where the trout are fat and silvery, 
and will only rise about sunrise or sundown, unless 
the day is cloudy; the Naiad's Elbow, where the 
brook rounds itself, smooth and dimpled, to em- 



54 Memories and Pictures 

brace a cluster of pink laurel-bushes. All these I 
know; yes, and almost every current and eddy and 
backwater I know long before I come to it. I 
remember where I caught the big trout the first 
year I came to the stream; and where I lost a 
bigger one. I remember the pool where there were 
plenty of good fish last year, and wonder whether 
they are there now. 

Better things than these I remember: the com- 
panions with whom I have followed the stream 
in days long past; the rendezvous with a comrade 
at the place where the rustic bridge crosses the 
brook; the hours of sweet converse beside the 
friendship-fire; the meeting at twilight with my 
lady Greygown and the children, who have come 
down by the wood-road to walk home with me. 

Surely it is pleasant to follow an old stream. 
Flowers grow along its banks which are not to 
be found anywhere else in the wide world. "There 
is rosemary, that's for remembrance; and there is 
pansies, that's for thoughts!" 

One May evening, a couple of years since, I was 
angling in the Swift water, and came upon Joseph 
Jefferson, stretched out on a large rock in mid- 
stream, and casting the fly down a long pool. He 
had passed the threescore years and ten, but he 
was as eager and as happy as a boy in his fishing. 

*'You here!" I cried. ''What good fortune 
brought you into these waters?" 

"Ah," he answered, "I fished this brook forty- 
five years ago. It was in the Paradise Valley that 



The Open Fire 55 

I first thought of Rip Van Winkle. I wanted to 
come back again, for the s^ke of old times." 

But what has all this to do with an open fire? 
I will tell you. It is at the places along the stream, 
where the little flames of love and friendship have 
been kindled in bygone days, that the past returns 
most vividly. These are the altars of remem- 
brance. 

It is strange how long a small fire will leave its 
mark. The charred sticks, the black coals, do not 
decay easily. If they lie well up the bank, out of 
reach of the spring floods, they will stay there for 
years. If you have chanced to build a rough fire- 
place of stones from the brook, it seems almost as 
if it would last forever. 

There is a mossy knoll beneath a great butter- 
nut-tree on the Swiftwater where such a fireplace 
was built four years ago; and whenever I come 
to that place now I lay the rod aside, and sit down 
for a little while by the fast-flowing water, and 
remember. 

This is what I see : A man wading up the stream, 
with a creel over his shoulder, and perhaps a dozen 
trout in it; two little lads in gray corduroys run- 
ning down the path through the woods to meet 
him, one carrying a frying-pan and a kettle, the 
other with a basket of lunch on his arm. Then I 
see the bright flames leaping up in the fireplace, 
and hear the trout sizzling in the pan, and smell 
the appetizing odor. Now I see the lads coming 
back across the foot-bridge that spans the stream. 



56 Memories and Pictures 

with a bottle of milk from the nearest farmhouse. 
They are laughing and teetering as they balance 
along the single plank. Now the table is spread 
on the moss. How good the lunch tastes ! Never 
were there such pink-fleshed trout, such crisp and 
savory slices of broiled bacon. Douglas (the be- 
loved doll that the younger lad shamefacedly 
brings out from the pocket of his jacket) must cer- 
tainly have some of it. And after the lunch is 
finished, and the birds' portion has been scattered 
on the moss, we creep carefully on our hands and 
knees to the edge of the brook, and look over the 
bank at the big trout that is poising himself in the 
amber water. We have tried a dozen times to 
catch him, but never succeeded. The next time, 
perhaps 

Well, the fireplace is still standing. The but- 
ternut-tree spreads its broad branches above the 
stream. The violets and the bishopscaps and the 
wild anemones are sprinkled over the banks. The 
yellow-throat and the water-thrush and the vireos 
still sing the same tunes in the thicket. And the 
elder of the two lads often comes back with me to 
that pleasant place and shares my fisherman's luck 
beside the Swiftwater. 

But the younger lad? 

Ah, my little Barney, you have gone to follow 
a new stream — clear as crystal — flowing through 
fields of wonderful flowers that never fade. It is 
a strange river to Teddy and me; strange and very 
far away. Some day we shall see it with you; 



l^he Open Fire 57 

and you will teach us the names of those blossoms 
that do not wither. But till then, little Barney, the 
other lad and I will follow the old stream that 
flows by the woodland fireplace — your altar. 

Rue grows here. Yes, there is plenty of rue. 
But there is also rosemary, that's for remembrance ! 
And close beside it I see a little heart's-ease. 



PART II 
SONGS OUT-OF-DOORS 



BIRDS IN THE MORNING 

This is the carol the Robin throws 
Over the edge of the valley; 

Listen how boldly it flows, 
Sally on sally: 

Tirra-lirra, 
Doimi the river, 
Laughing water 
All a-quiver. 
Day is near, 
Clear, clear. 
Fish are breaking, 
Time for waking. 
Tup, tup, tup! 
Do you hear? 
All clear — 
Wake up I 

This is the ballad the Bluebird sings, 

Unto his mate replying, 
Shaking the tune from his wings 

While he is flying: 
6i 



62 Songs Out-of- Doors 

Surely, surely, surely, 
Life is dear 
Even here. 
Blue above, 
You to love. 

Purely, purely, purely. 



This Is the song the Brown Thrush flings 

Out of his thicket of roses; 
Hark how it warbles and rings, 

Mark how it closes: 

Luck, luck. 

What luck? 

Good enough for me! 

I'm alive, you see. 

Sun shining. 

No repining; 

Never borrow 

Idle sorrow; 

Drop it! 

Cover it up! 

Hold your cup! 

Joy will ail it, 

Don't spill it. 

Steady, be ready. 

Good luck! 



THE SONG-SPARROW 

There is a bird I know so well, 

It seems as if he must have sung 

Beside my crib when I was young; 
Before I knew the way to spell 

The name of even the smallest bird, 

His gentle- joyful song I heard. 
Now see if you can tell, my dear, 
What bird it is that, every year, 
Sings "Sweet — sweet — sweet — very merry cheer.' 

He comes in March, when winds are strong. 

And snow returns to hide the earth; 

But still he warms his heart with mirth. 
And waits for May. He lingers long 

While flowers fade; and every day 

Repeats his small, contented lay; 
As if to say, we need not fear 
The season's change, if love is here 
With ''Sweet — sweet — sweet — very merry cheer.' 

He does not wear a Joseph's coat 

Of many colors, smart and gay; 

His suit is Quaker brown and gray. 
With darker patches at his throat, 

63 



64 Songs Out-of-Doors 

And yet of all the well-dressed throng 

Not one can sing so brave a song. 
It makes the pride of looks appear 
A vain and foolish thing, to hear 
His ''Sweet — sweet — szveet — very merry cheer." 

A lofty place he does not love, 

But sits by choice, and well at ease, 
In hedges, and in little trees 
That stretch their slender arms above 
The meadow-brook; and there he sings 
Till all the field with pleasure rings; 
And so he tells in every ear. 
That lowly homes to heaven are near 
In ''Sweet — sweet- — sweet — very merry cheer." 

I like the tune, I like the words; 

They seem so true, so free from art, 

So friendly, and so full of heart, 
That if but one of all the birds 

Could be my comrade everywhere, 

My little brother of the air. 
This is the one I'd choose, my dear. 
Because he'd bless me, every year, 
With "Sweet — sweet — sweet — very merry cheer." 



THE MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT 

While May bedecks the naked trees 
With tassels and embroideries, 
And many blue-eyed violets beam 
Along the edges of the stream, 
I hear a voice that seems to say. 
Now near at hand, now far away, 
^Witchery — witchery — witchery T 

An incantation so serene. 
So innocent, befits the scene: 
There's magic in that small bird's note — 
See, there he flits — the Yellow-throat; 
A living sunbeam, tipped with wings, 
A spark of light that shines and sings 
'' Witchery — witchery — witchery !" 

You prophet with a pleasant name, 
If out of Mary-land you came, 
You know the way that thither goes 
Where Mary's lovely garden grows: 
Fly swiftly back to her, I pray. 
And try, to call her down this way, 
' ' Witch ery — witch ery — zvitc heryT 
65 



66 Songs Oiit-of-Doors 

Tell her to leave her cockle-shells, 
And all her little silver bells 
That blossom into melody, 
And all her maids less fair than she. 
She does not need these pretty things. 
For everywhere she comes, she brings 
''Witchery — witchery — witc hery /" 

The woods are greening overhead. 
And flowers adorn each mossy bed; 
The waters babble as they run — 
One thing is lacking, only one: 
If Mary were but here to-day, 
I would believe your charming lay, 
"Witchery — witchery — witc hery /" 

Along the shady road I look — 
Who's coming now across the brook? 
A woodland maid, all robed in white — 
The leaves dance round her with delight. 
The stream laughs out beneath her feet — 
Sing, merry bird, the charm's complete, 
"Witchery — witchery — witchery /" 



THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 

Do you remember, father — 
It seems so long ago — 

The day we fished together 
Along the Pocono? 

At dusk I waited for you, 
Beside the lumber-mill. 

And there I heard a hidden bird 
That chanted, "whip-poor-will!" 
"Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill /" 
Sad and shrill — '' whip p o or will T 

The place was all deserted; 
The mill-wheel hung at rest; 

The lonely star of evening 
Was quivering in the west; 

The veil of night was falling; 
The winds were folded still; 

And everywhere the trembling air 
Re-echoed "whip-poor-will !" 
^Whippoorwill ! whippoorwill /" 
Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill T 

You seemed so long in coming, 

I felt so much alone; 
The wide, dark world was round me. 

And life was all unknown; 
67 



68 Songs Out-of-Doors 

The hand of sorrow touched me, 
And made my senses thrill 

With all the pain that haunts the strain 
Of mournful whip-poor-will. 
*WhippoorwiU! whippoorwill /" 
Sad and shrill — ^^whippoorwill T 

What did I know of trouble? 
An idle little lad; 

I had not learned the lessons 
That make men wise and sad, 

I dreamed of grief and parting, 
And something seemed to fill 

My heart with tears, while in my ears 
Resounded ^'whip-poor-will !'^ 
* Whippoorwill! whippoorwill T 
Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill!'* 

Twas but a shadowy sadness. 

That lightly passed away; 
But I have known the substance 

Of sorrow, since that day. 
For nevermore at twilight, 

Beside the silent mill, 
I'll wait for you, in the falling dew. 

And hear the whip-poor-will. 

*' Whippoorwill ! ivhippoorwill I" 

Sad and shrill — "whippoorwill !'* 

But if you still remember. 

In that fair land of light. 
The pains and fears that touch us 

Along this edge of night. 



The Whip- Poor- Will 69 

I think all earthly grieving, 

And all our mortal ill, 
To you must seem like a boy's sad dream, 

Who hears the whip-poor-will. 

^'IVhippoorzmll ! whippoorwill /" 

A passing thrill — "whippoorwill T 



THE MOCKING-BIRD 

In mirth he mocks the other birds at noon. 
Catching the lilt of every easy tune; 
But when the day departs he sings of love, — 
His own wild song beneath the listening moon. 



AN ANGLER'S WISH IN TOWN 



When tulips bloom in Union Square, 
And timid breaths of vernal air 

Go wandering down the dusty town. 
Like children lost in Vanity Fair; 

When every long, unlovely row 
Of westward houses stands aglow, 

And leads the eyes toward sunset skies 
Beyond the hills where green trees grow ; 

Then weary seems the street parade. 
And weary books, and weary trade; 
I'm only wishing to go a-fishing; 
For this the month of May was made. 



II 



I guess the pussy-willows now 
Are creeping out on every bough 

Along the brook; and robins look 
For early worms behind the plough. 
70 



An Angler s Wish in Town 71 

The thistle-birds have changed their dun, 
For yellow coats, to match the sun; 

And in the same array of flame 
The Dandelion Show's begun. 

The flocks of young anemones 

Are dancing round the budding trees: 

Who can help wishing to go a-fishing 
In days as full of joy as these? 

Ill 

I think the meadow-lark's clear sound 
Leaks upward slowly from the ground, 

While on the wing, the bluebirds ring 
Their wedding-bells to woods around. 

The flirting chewink calls his dear 
Behind the bush; and very near, 

Where water flows, where green grass grows, 
Song-sparrows gently sing, "Good cheer." 

And, best of all, through twilight's calm 
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm. 

How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing 
In days so sweet with music's balm! 

IV 

'Tis not a proud desire of mine ; 
I ask for nothing superfine; 

No heavy weight, no salmon great, 
To break the record, or my line: 



72 Songs Out-of-Doors 

Only an idle little stream, 

Whose amber waters softly gleam, 

Where I may wade, through woodland shade, 
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream: 

Only a trout or two, to dart 

From foaming pools, and try my art: 

No more I'm wishing — old-fashioned fishing, 
And just a day on Nature's heart. 



THE VEERY 

The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood 

were pouring. 
When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost love 

deploring. 
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange 

and eerie; 
I longed to hear a simpler strain — the wood-notes 

of the veery. 

The laverock sings a bonny lay above the Scottish 

heather ; 
It sprinkles down from far away like light and love 

together ; 
He drops the golden notes to greet his brooding 

mate, his dearie; 
I only know one song more sweet — ^the vespers of 

the veery. 



The Veery ']^ 

In English gardens, green and bright and full of 

fruity treasure, 
I heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry 

measure : 



The ballad was a pleasant one, the tune was loud 

and cheery, 
And yet, with every setting sun, I listened for the 

veery. 

But far away, and far away, the tawny thrush is 

singing; 
New England woods, at close of day, with that 

clear chant are ringing: 
And when my light of life is low, and heart and 

flesh are weary, 
I fain would hear, before I go, the wood-notes of 

the veery. 



THE RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET 



Where's your kingdom, little king? 

Where's the land you call your own, 

Where's your palace, and your throne? 
Fluttering lightly on the wing 

Through the blossom-world of May, 

Whither lies your royal way? 

Where's the realm that owns your sway, 
Little king? 

Far to northward lies a land, 
Where the trees together stand 
Closer than the blades of wheat, 
When the summer is complete. 
Like a robe the forests hide 
Lonely vale and mountain side: 
Balsam, hemlock, spruce and pine, — 
All those mighty trees are mine. 
There's a river -flowing free; 
'All its waves belong to me. 
There's a lake so clear and bright 
Stars shine out of it all night, 
And the rowan-berries red 
Round it like a girdle spread. 
Feasting plentiful and fine, 
74 



The Ruby-Crowned Kinglet 75 

Air that cheers the heart like wine, 
Royal pleasures by the score. 
Wait for me in Labrador 
There Fll build my dainty nest; 
There Til fix my court and rest; 
There from dawn to dark Fll sing: 
Happy kingdom! Lucky king! 



II 



Back again, my little king! 
Is your happy kingdom lost 
To that rebel knave, Jack Frost? 

Have you felt the snow-flakes sting? 
Autumn is a rude disrober: 
Houseless, homeless in October, 
Whither now ? Your plight is sober, 
Exiled king! 

Far to southward lie the regions 
Where my loyal iiower-legions 
Hold possession of the year, 
Filling every month with cheer, 
Christmas wakes the winter rose; 
New Year daffodils unclose; 
Yellow jasmine through the woods 
Runs in March with golden Hoods, 
Dropping from the tallest trees 
Shining streams that never freeze. 
Thither I must find my way. 
Fly by night and feed by day. 



76 Songs Out-of-Doors 

Till I see the southern moon 
Glistening on the broad lagoon. 
Where the cypress' vivid green, 
And the dark magnolia's sheen, 
Weave a shelter round my home. 
There the snow-storms never come. 
There the bannered mosses gray 
In the breezes gently sway. 
Hanging low on every side 
Round the covert where I hide. 
There I hold my winter court. 
Full of merriment and sport: 
There I take my ease and sing: 
Happy kingdom! Lucky king! 



Ill 



Little boaster, vagrant king! 

Neither north nor south is yours : 
You've no kingdom that endures. 

Wandering every fall and spring, 
With your painted crown so slender, 
And your talk of royal splendor 
Must I call you a Pretender, 
Landless king? 

Never king by right divine 
Ruled a richer realm than mine! 
What are lands and golden crowns, 
Armies, fortresses and towns, 



Wings of a Dove 77 

Jewels, sceptres, robes, and rings, — 
What are these to song and ■wings f 
Everywhere that I can Uy, 
There I own the earth and sky; 
Everywhere that I can sing, 
There Tm happy as a king. 



WINGS OF A DOVE 



At sunset, when the rosy light was dying 

Far down the pathway of the west, 
I saw a lonely dove in silence flying, 
To be at rest. 

Pilgrim of air, I cried, could I but borrow 
Thy wandering wings, thy freedom blest, 
I'd fly away from every careful sorrow, 
And find my rest. 

II 

But when the dusk a filmy veil was weaving. 

Back came the dove to seek her nest 
Deep in the forest where her mate was grieving- 
There was true rest. 

Peace, heart of mine ! no longer sigh to wander ; 

Lose not thy life in fruitless quest. 
There are no happy islands over yonder; 
Come home and rest. 



PART III 
STORIES 



A FRIEND OF JUSTICE 

He was a great dog, thirty inches high at the 
shoulder ; broad-chested, with straight, sinewy legs ; 
and covered with thick, wavy, cream-colored hair 
from the tips of his short ears to the end of his 
bushy tail — all except the left side of his face. 
That was black from ear to nose — coal-black; and 
in the centre of this storm-cloud his eye gleamed 
like fire. 

How this sinister mark came to him, he never 
knew. Indeed, it is not likely that he had any idea 
of the part that it played in his career. The atti- 
tude that the world took toward him from the be- 
ginning, an attitude of aggressive mistrust — the 
role that he was expected and practically forced 
to assume in the drama of existence, the role of a 
hero of interminable strife — must have seemed to 
him altogether mysterious and somewhat absurd. 
But his part was fixed by the black patch. It gave 
him an aspect so truculent and forbidding that all 
the elements of warfare gathered around him as 
hornets around a sugar barrel, and his appearance 
in public was like the raising of a flag for battle. 

He was called Pichou * because he looked so 

* Pronounce this Pee' shoo. 
8i 



82 Stories 

ugly and so fierce — just like a lynx — as the French 
Canadians say, ''ugly as a lynx." But in reality 
he was a dog of orderly and peaceable instincts, 
with a deep sense of right and wrong, and a great 
desire to do his duty in the world. He hated mean- 
ness and deceit, and was a strong friend of justice 
and fair-play. 

When Pichou's master, Dan Scott, the Hudson 
Bay agent, first brought him down to Seven Isl- 
ands as a sledge-dog he found that his work was 
cut out for him on a generous scale. It is true 
that at first he had no regular canine labor to per- 
form, for it was summer. Seven months of the 
year, on the North Shore, a sledge-dog's occupa- 
tion is gone. He is the idlest creature in the 
universe. 

But Pichou, being a new-comer, had to win his 
footing in the community; and that was no light 
task. With the humans it was comparatively easy. 
At the outset they mistrusted him on account of 
his looks. Virgile Boulianne asked : ''Why did you 
buy such an ugly dog?" Ovide, who was the wit 
of the family, said: "I suppose M'sieu' Scott got a 
present for taking him." 

"It's a good dog," said Dan Scott. "Treat him 
well and he'll treat you well. Kick him and I kick 
you." 

The village decided to accept Pichou at his mas- 
ter's valuation. Moderate friendliness, with pre- 
cautions, was shown toward him by everybody. 

But while the relations with the humans of Seven 



A Friend of Justice 83 

Islands were soon established on a fair footing, 
with the canines Pichou had a very different affair. 
They were not willing to accept any recommenda- 
tions as to character. They judged for themselves ; 
and they judged by appearances; and their judg- 
ment was utterly hostile to Pichou. 

They decided that he was a proud dog, a fierce 
dog, a bad dog, a fighter. He must do one of two 
things: stay at home in the yard of the Honorable 
Hudson Bay Company, which is a thing that no 
self-respecting dog would do in the summer-time, 
when codfish heads are strewn along the beach; 
or fight his way from one end of the village to the 
other, which Pichou promptly did, leaving enemies 
behind every fence. Huskies never forget a grudge. 
They are malignant to the core. Hatred is the wine 
of cowardly hearts. This is as true of dogs as it 
is of men. 

Then Pichou, having settled his foreign relations, 
turned his attention to matters at home. There 
were four other dogs in Dan Scott's team. They 
did not want Pichou for a leader, and he knew it. 
They were bitter with jealousy. The black patch 
was loathsome to them. They treated him disre- 
spectfully, insultingly, grossly. Affairs came to a 
head when Pecan, a rusty gray dog who had great 
ambitions and little sense, disputed Pichou's tenure 
of a certain hambone. Dan Scott looked on plac- 
idly while the dispute was terminated. Then he 
washed the blood and sand from the gashes on 
Pecan's shoulder, and patted Pichou on the h^ad. 



84 Stories 

"Good dog," he said. ''You're the boss." 

There was no further question about Pichou's 
leadership of the team. But the obedience of his 
followers was unwilling and sullen. There was no 
love in it. 

He did not shrink from his responsibilities. 
There were certain reforms in the community which 
seemed to him of vital importance, and he put them 
through. 

First of all, he made up his mind that there 
ought to be peace and order on the village street. 
In the yards of the houses that were strung along 
it there should be home rule, and every dog should 
deal with trespassers as he saw fit. Also on the 
beach, and around the fish-shanties, and under the 
racks where the cod were drying, the right of the 
strong jaw should prevail, and differences of opin- 
ion should be adjusted in the old-fashioned way. 
But on the sandy road, bordered with a broken 
board-walk, which ran between the houses and the 
beach, courtesy and propriety must be observed. 
Visitors walked there. Children played there. It 
was the general promenade. It must be kept peace- 
ful and decent. This was the First Law of the 
Dogs of Seven Islands: If two dogs quarrel on 
the street they must go elsewhere to settle it. It 
was highly unpopular, but Pichou enforced it with 
his teeth. 

The Second Law was equally unpopular: No 
stealing from the Honorable H. B. Company. If 
a man bought bacon or corned-beef or any other 



A Friend of Jttstice 85 

delicacy, and stored it in an insecure place, or if 
he left fish on the beach overnight, his dogs might 
act according to their inclination. Though Pichou 
did not understand how honest dogs could steal 
from their own master, he was willing to admit 
that this was their affair. His affair was that no- 
body should steal anything from the Post. It cost 
him many night-watches, and some large battles to 
carry it out, but he did it. In the course of time 
it came to pass that the other dogs kept away from 
the Post altogether, to avoid temptations; and his 
own team spent most of their free time wandering 
about to escape discipline. 

The most recalcitrant subjects with whom Pi- 
chou had to deal in all these matters were the 
team of Ovide Boulianne. There were five of 
them, and up to this time they had been the best 
team in the village. They had one virtue: under 
the whip they could whirl a sledge over the snow 
farther and faster than a horse could trot in a day. 
But they had innumerable vices. Their leader, 
Carcajou, had a fleece like a merino ram. But 
under this coat of innocence he carried a heart so 
black that he would bite while he was wagging his 
tail. This smooth devil, and his four followers 
like unto himself, had sworn relentless hatred to 
PichOu, and they made his life difficult. 

But his great and sufficient consolation for all 
toils and troubles was the friendship with his mas- 
ter. In the long summer evenings, when Dan 
Scott was making up his accounts in the store, or 



86 Stories 

studying his pocket cyclopaedia of medicine in 
the living-room of the Post, with its low beams 
and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou 
would lie contentedly at his feet. In the frosty 
autumnal mornings, when the brant were flocking 
in the marshes at the head of the bay, they would 
go out hunting together in a skiff. And who could 
lie so still as Pichou when the game was approach- 
ing? Or who could spring so quickly and joy- 
ously to retrieve a wounded bird? But best of all 
were the long walks on Sunday afternoons, on the 
yellow beach that stretched away toward the Moisie, 
or through the fir-forest behind the Pointe des 
Chasseurs. Then master and dog had fellowship 
together in silence. To the dumb companion it was 
like walking with his God in the garden in the cool 
of the day. 

When winter came, and snow fell, and waters 
froze, Pichou's serious duties began. The long, 
slim sledge, with its curving prow, and its runners 
of whalebone, was put in order. The harness of 
caribou-hide was repaired and strengthened. The 
dogs, even the most vicious of them, rejoiced at 
the prospect of doing the one thing that they could 
do best. Each one strained at his trace as if he 
would drag the sledge alone. Then the long tan- 
dem was straightened out, Dan Scott took his place 
on the low seat, cracked his whip, shouted, and the 
equipage darted along the snowy track like a fifty- 
foot arrow. 

Pichou was in the lead, and he showed his mettle 



A Friend of Justice 87 

from the start. No need of the terrible whip to 
lash him forward or to guide his course. A word 
was enough. ''Hoc! Hoc! Hoc!" and he swung 
to the right, avoiding an air-hole. "Re-re ! Re-re !" 
and he veered to the left, dodging a heap of broken 
ice. At the end of the day's run — thirty, forty, 
fifty miles — the dogs got their food for the day, 
one dried fish apiece; and at noon the next day, 
reckless of bleeding feet, they flew back over the 
same track, and broke their fast at Seven Islands 
before eight o'clock. The ration was the same, a 
single fish; always the same, except when it was 
varied by a cube of ancient, evil-smelling, potent 
whale's flesh, which a dog can swallow at a single 
gulp. Yet the dogs of the North Shore are never 
so full of vigor, courage, and joy of life as when 
the sledges are running. It is in summer, when 
food is plenty and work slack, that they sicken 
and die. 

Pichou's leadership of his team became famous. 
Under his discipline the other dogs developed speed 
and steadiness. One day they made the distance 
to the Godbout in a single journey, a wonderful 
run of over eighty miles. But they loved their 
leader no better, though they followed him faster. 
And as for the other teams, especially Carcajou's, 
they were still firm in their deadly hatred for the 
dog with the black patch. 

It was in the second winter after Pichou's com- 
ing to Seven Islands that the great trial of his 
courage arrived. Late in February an Indian run- 



SS stories 

ner on snow-shoes staggered into the village. He 
brought news from the 'hunting-parties that were 
wintering far up on the Ste. Marguerite — good 
news and bad. First, they had already made a 
good hunting: for the furs, that is to say. They 
had killed many otter, some fisher and beaver, and 
four silver foxes — a marvel of fortune. But then, 
for the food, the chase was bad, very bad — no cari- 
bou, no hare, no ptarmigan, nothing for many days. 
Provisions were very low. There were six families 
together. Then la grippe had taken hold of them. 
They were sick, starving. They would probably 
die, at least most of the women and children. It 
was a bad job. 

Dan Scott had peculiar ideas of his duty toward 
the savages. He was not romantic, but he liked to 
do the square thing. Besides, he had been reading 
up on la grippe, and he had some new medicine for 
it, capsules from Montreal, very powerful — quinine, 
phenacetine, and morphine. He was as eager to 
try this new medicine as a boy is to fire off a new 
gun. He loaded the sledge with provisions and 
the medicine-chest with capsules, harnessed his 
team, and started up the river. Thermometer thirty 
degrees below zero ; air like crystal ; snow six feet 
deep on the level. 

The first day's journey was slow, for the going 
was soft, and the track, at places, had to be broken 
out with snow-shoes. Camp was made at the foot 
of the big fall — a hole in snow, a bed of boughs, 
a hot fire, and a blanket stretched on a couple of 



A Friend of Jits tic e 89 

sticks to reflect the heat, the dogs on the other side 
of the fire, and Pichou close to his master. 

In the morning there was the steep hill beside 
the fall to climb, alternately soft and slippery, now 
a slope of glass and now a treacherous drift of 
yielding feathers ; it was a road set on end. But 
Pichou flattened his back and strained his loins 
and dug his toes into the snow and would not give 
back an inch. When the rest of the team balked 
the long whip slashed across their backs and re- 
called them to their duty. At last their leader 
topped the ridge, and the others struggled after 
him. Before them stretched the great dead-water 
of the river, a straight white path to No-man's- 
land. The snow was smooth and level, and the 
crust was hard enough to bear. Pichou settled 
down to his work at a glorious pace. He seemed 
to know that he must do his best, and that some- 
thing important depended on the quickness of his 
legs. On through the glittering solitude, on 
through the death-like silence, sped the sledge, 
between the interminable walls of the forest, past 
the mouths of nameless rivers, under the shadow of 
grim mountains. At noon Dan Scott boiled the 
kettle, and ate his bread and bacon. But there was 
nothing for the dogs, not even for Pichou ; for dis- 
cipline is discipline, and the best of sledge-dogs will 
not run well after he has been fed. 

Then forward again, along the lifeless road ; 
slowly over rapids, where the ice was rough and 
broken; swiftly over still waters, where the way 



90 Stories 

was level; until they came to the foot of the last 
lake, and camped for the night. The Indians were 
but a few miles away, at the head of the lake, and 
it would be easy to reach them in the morning. 

But there was another camp on the Ste. Margue- 
rite that night, and it was nearer to Dan Scott than 
the Indians were. Ovide Boulianne had followed 
him up the river, close on his track, which made the 
going easier. 

*'Does that Hudson Bay fellow suppose that I 
allow him all that pelletrie to himself and the Com- 
pany? Four silver fox, besides otter and beaver? 
No, thank you ! I take some provision, and some 
whiskey. I go to make trade also." Thus spoke 
the shrewd Ovide, proving that commerce is no less 
daring, no less resolute, than philanthropy. The 
only difference is in the motive, and that is not 
always visible. Ovide camped the second night at 
a bend of the river, a mile below the foot of the 
lake. Between him and Dan Scott there was a hill 
covered with a dense thicket of spruce. 

By what magic did Carcajou know that Pichou, 
his old enemy, was so near him in that vast wilder- 
ness of white death ? By what mysterious language 
did he communicate his knowledge to his compan- 
ions and stir the sleeping hatred in their hearts and 
mature the conspiracy of revenge? 

Pichou, sleeping by the fire, was awakened by 
the fall of a lump of snow from the branch of a 
shaken evergreen. That was nothing. But there 
were other sounds in the forest, faint, stealthy, in- 



A Friend of Justice 91 

audible to an ear less keen than his. He crept out 
of the shelter and looked into the wood. He could 
see shadowy forms, stealing among the trees, glid- 
ing down the hill. Five of them. Wolves, doubt- 
less ! He must guard the provisions. By this time 
the rest of his team were awake. Their eyes glit- 
tered. They stirred uneasily. But they did not 
move from the dying fire. It was no concern of 
theirs what their leader chose to do out of hours. 
In the traces they would follow him, but there was 
no loyalty in their hearts. Pichou stood alone by 
the sledge, waiting for the wolves. 

But these were no wolves. They were assassins. 
Like a company of soldiers, they lined up together 
and rushed silently down the slope. Like lightning 
they leaped upon the solitary dog and struck him 
down. In an instant, before Dan Scott could throw 
ofif his blanket and seize the loaded butt of his whip, 
Pichou's throat and breast were torn to rags, his 
life-blood poured upon the snow, and his murder- 
ers were slinking away, slavering and muttering 
through the forest. 

Dan Scott knelt beside his best friend. At a 
glance he saw that the injury was fatal. "Well 
done, Pichou !" he murmured, "you fought a good 

fight." 

And the dog, by a brave eflfort, lifted the head 
with the black patch on it, for the last time, licked 
his master's hand, and then dropped back upon the 
snow — contented, happy, dead. 

There is but one drawback to a dog's friendship. 
It does not last long enough. 



THE THRILLING MOMENT 

Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less 
of a turning-point. Opportunities are swarming 
around us all the time thicker than gnats at sun- 
down. We walk through a cloud of chances, and 
if we were always conscious of them they would 
worry us almost to death. Only now and then, by 
way of special excitement, we see how delicately 
our fortune is poised and balanced on the pivot of 
a single incident, and then we call our experience 
a crisis, a thrilling moment. 

One of these came to me in the autumn of 1894, 
on the banks of the Unpronounceable River, in the 
Province of Quebec. It was the last day of the 
open season for land-locked salmon, and we had 
set our hearts on catching some good fish to take 
home with us. We walked up from the mouth of 
the river, four preposterously long and rough miles, 
to a famous fishing-pool. It was a noble day for 
walking; the air was clear and crisp, and all the 
hills around us were glowing with the crimson 
foliage of those little bushes which God created to 
make burned lands look beautiful. The trail ended 
in a precipitous gully, down which we scrambled 
with high hopes, and fishing-rods unbroken, only 
92 



The Thrilling Moment 93 

to find that the river was in a condition which made 
anghng absurd if not impossible. 

There must have been a cloud-burst among the 
mountains, for the water was coming down in a flood. 
The stream was bank-full, gurgling and eddying 
out among the bushes, and rushing over the shoal 
where the fish used to lie, in a brown torrent ten 
feet deep. Our last day with the salmon seemed 
destined to be a failure, and we must wait eight 
months before we could have another. There were 
three of us in the disappointment, and we shared 
it according to our temperaments. 

Paul virtuously resolved not to give up while 
there was a chance left, and wandered down-stream 
to look for an eddy where he might pick up a small 
fish. Ferdinand, our guide, resigned himself with- 
out a sigh to the consolation of eating blueberries, 
which he always did with great cheerfulness. But 
I, being more cast down than either of my com- 
rades, sought out a convenient seat among the 
rocks, and, adapting my anatomy as well as pos- 
sible to the irregularities of Nature's upholstery, 
settled down to read myself into a Christian frame 
of mind. 

Before beginning, my eyes roved sadly over the 
pool once more. It was but a casual glance. It 
lasted only for an instant. But in that fortunate 
fragment of time I distinctly saw the broad tail of 
a big fish rise and disappear in the swift water at 
the very head of the pool. 

Immediately the whole aspect of affairs was 



94 Stories 

changed. Despondency vanished, and the river 
gHttered with the beams of rising hope. 

I said nothing to my companions. It would 
have been unkind to disturb them with expectations 
which might never be reahzed. My immediate 
duty was to get within casting distance of that 
salmon as soon as possible. 

The way along the shore of the pool was diffi- 
cult. The bank was very steep, and the rocks by 
the river's edge were broken and glibbery. Pres- 
ently I came to a sheer wall of stone, perhaps thirty 
feet high, rising directly from the deep water. 

There was a tiny ledge or crevice running part 
of the way across the face of this wall, and by this 
four-inch path I edged along, holding my rod in 
one hand and clinging affectionately with the other 
to such clumps of grass and little bushes as I could 
find. There was one small huckleberry plant to 
which I had a particular attachment. 

The ledge in the rock soon came to an end. But 
below me in the pool there was a sunken reef, and 
on this reef a long log had caught, with one end 
sticking out of the water, within jumping distance. 
It was the only chance. To go back would have 
been dangerous. An angler with a large family 
dependent upon him for support has no right to 
incur unnecessary perils. 

Besides, the fish was waiting for me at the upper 
end of the pool ! 

So I jumped, landed on the end of the log, felt 
it settle slowly down, ran along it like a small boy 



The Thrilling Moment 95 

on a seesaw, and leaped off into shallow water just 
as the log rolled from the ledge and lunged out 
into the stream. 

I watched it with interest and congratulated my- 
self that I was no longer embarked upon it. On 
that craft a voyage down the Unpronounceable 
River would have been short but far from merry. 
The "all ashore" bell was not rung early enough. 
I just got off, with not half a second to spare. 

But now all was well, for I was within reach 
of the fish. A little scrambling over the rocks 
brought me to a point where I could easily cast 
over him. He was lying in a swift, smooth, nar- 
row channel between two large stones. It was a 
snug resting-place, and no doubt he would remain 
there for some time. So I took out my fly-book 
and prepared to angle for him according to the 
approved rules of the art. 

I carefully tested a brand-new leader, and at- 
tached it to the line with great deliberation and the 
proper knot. Then I gave my whole mind to the 
important question of a wise selection of flies. 

It is astonishing how much time and mental 
anxiety a man can spend on an apparently simple 
question like this. When you are buying flies in 
a shop it seems as if you never had half enough. 
You keep on picking out a half-dozen of each new 
variety as fast as the enticing salesman shows them 
to you. You stroll through the streets of Montreal 
or Quebec and drop in at every fishing-tackle deal- 
er's to see whether you can find a few more good 



96 Stories 

flies. Then, when you come to look over your col- 
lection at the critical moment on the bank of a 
stream, it seems as if you had ten times too many. 
And, spite of all, the precise fly that you need is 
not there. 

You select a couple that you think fairly good, 
lay them down beside you in the grass, and go on 
looking through the book for something better. 
Failing to satisfy yourself, you turn to pick up 
those that you have laid out, and find that they 
have mysteriously vanished from the face of the 
earth. 

Then you struggle with naughty words and 
relapse into a condition of mental palsy. 

The best thing to do in such a case is to adopt 
some abstract theory of action without delay, and 
put it into practice without hesitation. Then if 
you fail, you can throw the responsibility on the 
theory. 

Now, in regard to flies there are two theories. 
The old, conservative theory is, that on a bright 
day you should use a dark, dull fly, because it is 
less conspicuous. So I followed that theory first 
and put on a Great Dun and a Dark Montreal. I 
cast them delicately over the fish, but he would 
not look at them. 

Then I went over to the new, radical theory 
which says that on a bright day you must use a 
light, gay fly, because it is more in harmony with 
the sky, and therefore less noticeable. Accordingly 
I put on a Professor and a Parmacheene Belle ; but 



The Thrilling Moment 97 

this combination of learning and beauty had no 
attraction for the salmon. 

Then I fell back on a theory of my own, to the 
effect that the salmon have an aversion to red, and 
prefer yellow and brown. So I tried various 
combinations of flies in which these colors pre- 
dominated. 

Then I abandoned all theories and went straight 
through my book, trying something from every 
page, and winding up with that lure which the 
guides consider infallible — "a Jock o' Scott that 
cost fifty cents at Quebec." But it was all in vain. 
I was ready to despair. 

At this psychological moment I heard behind me 
a voice of hope — the song of a grasshopper: not 
one of those fat-legged, green-winged imbeciles 
that feebly tumble in the summer fields, but a game 
grasshopper — one of those thin-shanked, brown- 
winged fellows that leap like kangaroos, and fly 
like birds, and sing Kri-karee-karee-kri in their 
flight. 

It is not really a song, I know, but it sounds 
like one; and, if you had heard that Kri-karee 
carolling as I chased him over the rocks, you would 
have been sure that he was mocking me. 

I believed that he was the predestined lure for 
that salmon ; but it was hard to persuade him to 
fulfil his destiny. I slapped at him with my hat, 
but he was not there. I grasped at him on the 
bushes, and brought away "nothing but leaves." 
At last he made his way to the very edge of the 



gS Stories 

water and poised himself on a stone, with his legs 
well tucked in for a long leap and a bold flight to 
the other side of the river. It was my final oppor- 
tunity. I made a desperate grab at it and caught 
the grasshopper. 

My premonition proved to be correct. When 
that Kri-karee, invisibly attached to my leader, 
went floating down the stream, the salmon was 
surprised. It was the fourteenth of September, and 
he had supposed the grasshopper season was over. 
The unexpected temptation was too strong for him. 
He rose with a rush, and in an instant I was fast 
to the best land-locked salmon of the year. 

But the situation was not without its embarrass- 
ments. My rod weighed only four and a quarter 
ounces; the fish weighed between six and seven 
pounds. The water was furious and headstrong. 
I had only thirty yards of line and no landing-net. 

"Hold! Ferdinand!'^ I cried. "Bring the net, 
quick! A beauty! Hurry up!'"* 

I thought it must be an hour while he was mak- 
ing his way over the hill, through the underbrush, 
around the cliff. Again and again the fish ran out 
my line almost to the last turn. A dozen times he 
leaped from the water, shaking his silvery sides. 
Twice he tried to cut the leader across a sunken 
ledge. But at last he was played out, and came in 
quietly toward the point of the rock. At the same 
moment Ferdinand appeared with the net. 

Now, the use of the net is really the most diffi- 
cult part of angling. And Ferdinand is the best 




The situation was not without its embarrassments. 



The Thrilling Moment 99 

netsman in the Lake St. John country. He never 
makes the mistake of trying to scoop a fish in mo- 
tion. He does not grope around with aimless, 
futile strokes as if he were feeling for something 
in the dark. He does not entangle the dropper-fly 
in the net and tear the tail-fly out of the fish's 
mouth. He does not get excited. 

He quietly sinks the net in the water, and waits 
until he can see the fish distinctly, lying perfectly 
still and within reach. Then he makes a swift 
movement, like that of a mower swinging the 
scythe, takes the fish into the net head first, and 
lands him without a slip. 

I felt sure that Ferdinand was going to do the 
trick in precisely this way with my salmon. Just 
at the right instant he made one quick, steady 
swing of the arms, and — the head of the net broke 
clean ofif the handle and went floating away with 
the fish in it! 

All seemed to be lost. But Ferdinand was equal 
to the occasion. He seized a long, crooked stick 
that lay in a pile of driftwood on the shore, sprang 
into the water up to his waist, caught the net as it 
drifted past, and dragged it to land, with the ulti- 
mate salmon, the prize of the season, still glittering 
through its meshes. 

This is the story of my most thrilling moment 
as an angler. 

But which was the moment of the deepest thrill ? 

Was it when the huckleberry bush saved me from 
a watery grave, or when the log rolled under my 



LofG. 



loo Stories 

feet and started down the river? Was it when the 
fish rose, or when the net broke, or when the long 
stick captured it? 

No, it was none of these. It was when the Kri- 
karee sat with his legs tucked under him on the 
brink of the stream. That was the turning-point. 
The fortunes of the day depended on the compara- 
tive quickness of the reflex action of his nerves and 
mine. That was the thrilling moment. 

I see it now. A crisis is really the commonest 
thing in the world. The reason why life some- 
times seems dull to us is because we do not perceive 
the importance and the excitement of getting bait. 



THE KEEPER OF THE LIGHT 



When the light-house was built, many years ago, 
the Isle of the Wise Virgin had another name. It 
was called the Isle of Birds. Thousands of sea- 
fowl nested there. The handful of people who lived 
on the shore robbed the nests and slaughtered the 
birds, with considerable profit. It was perceived in 
advance that the building of the light-house would 
interfere with this, and with other things. Hence 
it was not altogether a popular improvement. Mar- 
cel Thibault, the oldest inhabitant, was the leader 
of the opposition. 

"That light-house!" said he, "what good will it 
be for us? We know the way in and out when it 
makes clear weather, by day or by night. But 
when the sky gets cloudy, when it makes fog, then 
we stay with ourselves at home. We know the 
way. What? The stranger boats? The stranger 
boats need not to come here, if they know not 
the way. The more fish, the more seals, the more 
everything will there be left for us. Just because 
of the stranger boats, to build something that makes 
all the birds wild and spoils the hunting — that is 

lOI 



I02 Stories 

a fool's work. The good God made no stupid light 
on the Isle of Birds. He saw no necessity of it. 

"Besides," continued Thibault, puffing slowly at 
his pipe, "besides — those stranger boats, sometimes 
they are lost, they come ashore. It is sad! But 
who gets the things that are saved, all sorts of 
things, good to put into our houses, good to eat, 
good to sell, sometimes a boat that can be patched 
up almost like new — who gets these things, eh? 
Doubtless those for whom the good God intended 
them. But who shall get them when this light- 
house is built, eh? Tell me that, you Baptiste 
Fortin." 

Fortin represented the party of progress in the 
little parliament of the beach. He had come down 
from Quebec some years ago, bringing with him a 
wife and two little daughters, and a good many 
new notions about life. He had good luck at the 
cod-fishing, and built a house with windows at the 
side as well as in front. When his third girl, Nata- 
line, was born, he went so far as to paint the house 
red, and put on a kitchen, and enclose a bit of 
ground for a yard. This marked him as a radical, 
an innovator. It was expected that he would de- 
fend the building of the light-house. And he did. 

"Monsieur Thibault," he said, "you talk well, but 
you talk too late. It is of a past age, your talk. A 
new time comes to the North Shore. We begin 
to civilize ourselves. To hold back against the 
light would be our shame. This light-house means 
good: good for us, and good for all who come to 



The Keeper of the Light 103 

this coast. It will bring more trade to us. It will 
bring a boat with the mail, with newspapers, per- 
haps once, perhaps twice a month, all through the 
summer. It will bring us into the great world. 
To lose that for the sake of a few birds would be 
a pity. Besides, it is impossible. The light-house 
is coming, certain." 

Fortin was right, of course. 

The light-house arrived. It was a very good 
house for that day. The keeper's dwelling had 
three rooms and was solidly built. The tower was 
thirty feet high. The lantern held a revolving 
light, and once every minute it was turned by 
clock-work, flashing a broad belt of radiance fifteen 
miles across the sea. All night long that big bright 
eye was opening and shutting. "Look!" said Thi- 
bault, "it winks like a one-eyed Windigo." 

The Department of Marine and Fisheries sent 
down an expert from Quebec to keep the light in 
order and run it for the first summer. He took 
Fortin as his assistant. By the end of August he 
reported to headquarters that the light was all 
right, and that Fortin was qualified to be appointed 
keeper. Before October was out the certificate of 
appointment came back, and the expert packed his 
bag to go up the river. 

"Now look here, Fortin," said he, "this is no 
fishing trip. Do you think you are up to this job?" 

"I suppose," said Fortin. 

"Well now, do you remember all this business 
about the machinery that turns the lantern ? That's 



I04 Stories 

the main thing. The bearings must be kept well 
oiled, and the weight must never get out of order. 
The clock-face will tell you when it is running 
right. If anything gets hitched up, here's the crank 
to keep it going until you can straighten the ma- 
chine again. It's easy enough to turn it. But you 
must never let it stop between dark and daylight. 
The regular turn once a minute — that's the mark 
of this light. If it shines steady it might as well 
be out. Yes, better! Any vessel coming along 
here in a dirty night and seeing a fixed light would 
take it for the Cape Seal and run ashore. This par- 
ticular light has got to revolve once a minute every 
night from April first to December tenth, certain. 
Can you do it?" 

"Certain," said Fortin. 

"That's the way I like to hear a man talk ! Now, 
you've got oil enough to last you through till the 
tenth of December, when you close the light, and 
to run on for a month in the spring after you open 
again. The ice may be late in going out and per- 
haps the supply-boat can't get down before the 
middle of April, or thereabouts. But she'll bring 
plenty of oil when she comes, so you'll be all right." 

"All right," said Fortin. 

"Well, I've said it all, I guess. You understand 
what you've got to do? Good-by and good luck. 
You're the keeper of the light now." 

"Good luck," said Fortin, "I am going to keep it." 

The same day he shut up the red house on the 
beach and moved to the white house on the island 



The Keeper of the Light 105 

with Marie-Anne, his wife, and the three girls, 
Alma, aged seventeen, Azilda, aged fifteen, and 
Nataline, aged thirteen. He was the captain, and 
Marie-Anne was the mate, and the three girls were 
the crew. They were all as full of happy pride as 
if they had come into possession of a great fortune. 

It was the thirty-first day of October. A snow- 
shower had silvered the island. The afternoon was 
clear and beautiful. As the sun sloped toward the 
rose-colored hills of the mainland the whole family 
stood out in front of the light-house looking up at 
the tower. 

"Regard him well, my children," said Baptiste; 
"God has given him to us to keep, and to keep us. 
Thibault says he is a Windigo. Well! We shall 
see that he is a friendly Windigo. Every minute 
all the night he shall wink, just for kindness and 
good luck to all the world, till the daylight." 



II 



On the ninth of November, at three o'clock in 
the afternoon, Baptiste went into the tower to see 
that the clock-work was in order for the night. He 
set the dial on the machine, put a few drops of oil 
on the bearings of the cylinder, and started to wind 
up the weight. 

It rose a few inches, gave a dull click, and then 
stopped dead. He tugged a little harder, but it 



io6 Stories 

would not move. Then he tried to let it down. 
He pushed at the lever that set the clock-work in 
motion. 

Then it dawned fearfully upon him that some- 
thing must be wrong. Trembling with anxiety, he 
climbed up and peered in among the wheels. 

The escapement wheel was cracked clean through, 
as if someone had struck it with the head of an 
axe, and one of the pallets of the spindle was stuck 
fast in the crack. He could knock it out easily 
enough, but when the crack came around again the 
pallet would catch and the clock would stop once 
more. It was a fatal injury. 

No matter how the injury to the clock-work was 
done. No matter who was to be blamed or pun- 
ished for it. That could wait. The question now 
was whether the light would fail or not. And it 
must be answered within a quarter of an hour. 

''Marie- Anne ! Alma!" he shouted, ''all of you! 
To me, in the tower!" 

He was up in the lantern when they came run- 
ning in, full of curiosity, excited, asking twenty 
questions at once. Nataline climbed up the ladder 
and put her head through the trap-door. 

"What is it?" she panted. "What has hap " 

"Go down," answered her father, "go down all 
at once. Wait for me. I am coming. I will 
explain." 

The explanation was not altogether lucid and 
scientific. There were some bad words mixed up 
with it. 



The Keeper of the Light 107 

Baptiste was still hot with anger and the unsat- 
isfied desire to whip somebody, he did not know 
whom, for something, he did not know what. But 
angry as he was, he was still sane enough to hold 
his mind hard and close to the main point. The 
crank must be adjusted; the machine must be ready 
to turn before dark. While he worked he hastily 
made the situation clear to his listeners. 

That crank must be turned by hand, round and 
round all night, not too slow, not too fast. The 
dial on the machine must mark time with the clock 
on the wall. The light must flash once every min- 
ute until daybreak. He would do as much of the 
labor as he could, but the wife and the two older 
girls must help him. Nataline could go to bed. 

At this Nataline's short upper lip trembled. She 
rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her dress, and 
began to weep silently. 

"What is the matter with you ?" said her mother ; 
"bad child, have you fear to sleep alone? A big 
girl like you !" 

"No," she sobbed, "I have no fear, but I want 
some of the fun." 

"Fun!" growled her father. "What fun? She 
calls this fun!" He looked at her for a moment, 
as she stood there, half-defiant, half-despondent, 
with her red mouth quivering and her big brown 
eyes sparkling fire; then he burst into a hearty 
laugh. 

"Come here, my little wild-cat," he said, draw- 
ing her to him and kissing her; "you are a good 



io8 Stories 

girl after all. I suppose you think this light is part 
yours, eh?" 

The girl nodded. 

"Well ! You shall have your share, fun and all. 
You shall make the tea for us and bring us some- 
thing to eat. Perhaps when Alma and 'Zilda 
fatigue themselves they will permit a few turns of 
the crank to you. Are you content? Run now and 
boil the kettle." 

It was a very long night. No matter how easily 
a handle turns, after a certain number of revolu- 
tions there is a stiffness about it. The stiffness is 
not in the handle, but in the hand that pushes it. 

Round and round, evenly, steadily, minute after 
minute, hour after hour, shoving out, drawing in, 
circle after circle, no swerving, no stopping, no 
varying the motion, turn after turn — fifty-five, 
fifty-six, fifty-seven — what's the use of counting? 
Watch the dial; go to sleep — no! for God's sake, 
no sleep ! But how hard it is to keep awake ! How 
heavy the arm grows, how stiffly the muscles move, 
how the will creaks and groans! It is not easy 
for a human being to become part of a machine. 

Fortin himself took the longest spell at the 
crank, of course. He went at his work with a rigid 
courage. His red-hot anger had cooled down into 
a shape that was like a bar of forged steel. He 
meant to make that light revolve if it killed him to 
do it. He was the captain of a company that had 
run into an ambuscade. He was going to fight his 
way through if he had to fight alone. 



The Keeper of the Light 109 

The wife and the two older girls followed him 
blindly and bravely, in the habit of sheer obedience. 
They did not quite understand the meaning of the 
task, the honor of victory, the shame of defeat. 
But Fortin said it must be done, and he knew best. 
So they took their places in turn, as he grew weary, 
and kept the light flashing. 

And Nataline — well, there is no way of describ- 
ing what Nataline did, except to say that she played 
the fife. 

She felt the contest just as her father did, not as 
deeply, perhaps, but in the same spirit. She went 
into the fight with darkness like a little soldier. 
And she played the fife. 

When she came up from the kitchen with the 
smoking pail of tea, she rapped on the door and 
called out to know whether the Windigo was at 
home to-night. 

She ran in and out of the place like a squirrel. 
She looked up at the light and laughed. Then she 
ran in and reported. *'He winks," she said, *'old 
one-eye winks beautifully. Keep him going. My 
turn now !" 

She refused to be put off with a shorter spell than 
the other girls. "No," she cried, "I can do it as 
well as you. You think you are so much older. 
Well, what of that ? The light is part mine ; father 
said so. Let me turn." 

When the first glimmer of the little day came 
shivering along the eastern horizon, Nataline was 
at the crank. The mother and the two older girls 



no Stories 

were half-asleep. Baptiste stepped out to look at 
the sky. ''Come," he cried, returning. "We can 
stop now, it is growing gray in the east, almost 
morning." 

''But not yet," said Nataline; "we must wait for 
the first red. A few more turns. Let's finish it up 
with a song." 

She shook her head and piped up the refrain of 
an old Canadian ballad. And to that cheerful 
music the first night's battle was carried through 
to victory. 

The next day Fortin spent two hours in trying to 
repair the clock-work. It was of no use. The broken 
part was indispensable and could not be replaced. 

At noon he went over to the main-land to tell of 
the disaster, and perhaps to find out if any hostile 
hand was responsible for it. He found out noth- 
ing. Everyone denied all knowledge of the acci- 
dent. Perhaps there was a flaw in the wheel ; per- 
haps it had broken itself. That was possible. 
Fortin could not deny it; but the thing that hurt 
him most was that he got so little sympathy. No- 
body seemed to care whether the light was kept 
burning or not. When he told them how the 
machine had been turned all night by hand, they 
were astonished. "Thunder!" they cried, "you 
must have had great misery to do that." But that 
he proposed to go on doing it for a month longer, 
until December tenth, and to begin again on April 
first, and go on turning the light by hand for three 
or four weeks more until the supply-boat came 



The Keeper of the Light 1 1 1 

down and brought the necessary tools to repair the 
machine — such an idea as this went beyond their 
horizon. 

''But you are crazy, Baptiste," they said ; "you 
can never do it; you are not capable." 

*'I would be crazy," he answered, "if I did not 
see what I must do. That light is my charge. 
In all the world there is nothing else so great as 
that for me and for my family — you understand? 
For us it is the chief thing. It is my Ten Com- 
mandments. I shall keep it." 

After a while he continued : "I want someone to 
help me with the work on the island. We must 
be up all the nights now. By day we must get 
some sleep. I want another man or a strong boy. 
Is there any who will come? The Government will 
pay. Or if not, I will pay, myself." 

This appeal was of no avail until Thibault's 
youngest son, Marcel, a well-grown boy of six- 
teen, volunteered. 

So the little Marcel was enlisted in the crew on 
the island. For thirty nights those six people — a 
man, and a boy, and four women (Nataline was 
not going to submit to any distinctions on the score 
of age, you may be sure) — for a full month they 
turned their flashing lantern by hand from dusk to 
daybreak. 

The fog, the frost, the hail, the snow beleaguered 
their tower. Hunger and cold, sleeplessness and 
weariness, pain and discouragement, held rendez- 
vous in that dismal, cramped little room. Many a 



112 Stories 

night Nataline's fife of fun played a feeble, wheezy 
note. But it played. And the crank went round. 
And every bit of glass in the lantern was as clear 
as polished crystal. And the big lamp was full of 
oil. And the great eye of the friendly giant winked 
without ceasing, through fierce storm and placid 
moonlight. 

When the tenth of December came, the light 
went to sleep for the winter, and the keepers took 
their way across the ice to the main-land. They 
had won the battle, not only on the island, fight- 
ing against the elements, but also at Dead Men's 
Point, against public opinion. The inhabitants be- 
gan to understand that the light-house meant some- 
thing — a law, an order, a principle. 

When the time arrived to kindle the light again 
in the spring, Fortin could have had anyone that 
he wanted to help him. But no ; he chose the little 
Marcel again; the boy wanted to go, and he had 
earned the right. Besides, he and Nataline had 
struck up a close friendship on the island, cemented 
during the winter by various hunting excursions 
after hares and ptarmigan. Marcel was a skilful 
setter of snares. But Nataline was not content 
until she had won consent to borrow her father's 
rifle. They hunted in partnership. One day they 
had shot a fox. That is, Nataline had shot it, 
though Marcel had seen it first and tracked it. 
Now they wanted to try for a seal on the point of 
the island when the ice went out. It was quite 
essential that Marcel should go. 



The Keeper of the Light 1 1 3 

But there was not much play in the spring ses- 
sion with the light on the island. It was a bitter 
job. December had been lamb-like compared with 
April. First, the southeast wind kept the ice driv- 
ing in along the shore. Then the northwest wind 
came hurtling down from the Arctic wilderness like 
a pack of wolves. There was a snow-storm of four 
days and nights that made the whole world — earth 
and sky and sea — look like a crazy white chaos. 
And through it all, that weary, dogged crank must 
be kept turning — turning from dark to daylight. 

It seemed as if the supply-boat would never 
come. At last they saw it, one fair afternoon, April 
the twenty-ninth, creeping slowly down the coast. 
They were just getting ready for another night's 
work. 

Fortin ran out of the tower, took off his hat, 
and began to say his prayers. The wife and the 
two elder girls stood in the kitchen door, crossing 
themselves, with tears in their eyes. Marcel and 
Nataline were coming up from the point of the 
island, where they had been watching for their seal. 
She was singing. When she saw the boat she 
stopped short for a minute. 

"Well," she said, ''they find us awake. And if 
they don't come faster than that we'll have an- 
other chance to show them how we make the light 
wink, eh?" 

Then she went on with her song. 



114 Stories 

III 

Nataline grew up like a young birch-tree — • 
stately and strong, good to look at. She was beau- 
tiful in her place ; she fitted it exactly. Her bronzed 
face with an under-tinge of red ; her low, black eye- 
brows; her clear eyes like the brown waters of a 
woodland stream; her dark, curly hair with little 
tendrils always blowing loose around the pillar of 
her neck; her broad breast and sloping shoulders; 
her firm, fearless step ; her voice, rich and vibrant ; 
her straight, steady looks — ^but there, who can de- 
scribe a thing like that? I tell you she was a girl 
to love out-of-doors. 

There was nothing that she could not do. She 
could cook ; she could swing an axe ; she could pad- 
dle a canoe; she could fish; she could shoot; and, 
best of all, she could run the light-house. Her 
father's devotion to it had gone into her blood. It 
was the centre of her life, her law of God. There 
was nothing about it that she did not understand 
and love. She lived by it and for it. 

There were no more accidents to the clock-work 
after the first one was repaired. It ran on regu- 
larly, year after year. 

Alma and Azilda were married and went away 
to live, one on the South Shore, the other at Que- 
bec. Nataline was her father's right-hand man. 
As the rheumatism took hold of him and lamed his 
shoulders and wrists, more and more of the work 
fell upon her. She was proud of it. 



The Keeper of the Light 115 

At last it came to pass, one day in January, that 
Baptiste died. The men dug through the snow 
behind the tiny chapel at Dead Men's Point, and 
made a grave for him, and the young priest of the 
mission read the funeral service over it. 

It went without saying that Nataline was to be 
the keeper of the light, at least until the supply- 
boat came down again in the spring and orders 
arrived from the Government in Quebec. Why 
not ? She was a woman, it is true. But if a woman 
can do a thing as well as a man, why should she 
not do it? Besides, Nataline could do this particu- 
lar thing much better than any man on the Point. 
Everybody approved of her as the heir of her 
father, especially young Marcel Thibault. 

What? 

Yes, of course. You could not help guessing it. 
He was Nataline's lover. They were to be married 
the next summer. They sat together in the best 
room, while the old mother was rocking to and fro 
and knitting beside the kitchen stove, and talked 
of what they were going to do. Their talk was 
mainly of the future, because they were young, 
and of the light, because Nataline's life belonged 
to it. 

That winter was a bad one on the North Shore, 
and particularly at Dead Men's Point. It was 
terribly bad. The summer before, the fishing had 
been almost a dead failure. In June a wild storm 
had smashed all the salmon nets and swept most 
of them away. In July they could find no caplin 



1 1 6 Stories 

for bait for the cod-fishing, and in August and 
September they could find no cod. The few bush- 
els of potatoes that some of the inhabitants had 
planted rotted in the ground. The people at the 
Point went into the winter short of money and very 
short of food. 

There were some supplies at the store, pork and 
flour and molasses, and they could run through the 
year on credit and pay their debts the following 
summer if the fish came back. But this resource 
also failed them. In the last week of January the 
store caught fire and burned up. Nothing was 
saved. The only hope now was the seal-hunting in 
February and March and April. That at least 
would bring them meat and oil enough to keep them 
from starvation. 

But this hope failed, too. The winds blew strong 
from the north and west, driving the ice far out 
into the gulf. The chase was long and perilous. 
The seals were few and wild. Less than a dozen 
were killed in all. By the last week in March Dead 
Men's Point stood face to face with famine. 

Then it was that old Thibault had an idea. 

"There is sperm oil on the Island of Birds," said 
he, ''in the light-house, plenty of it, gallons of it. 
It is not very good to taste, perhaps, but what of 
that? It will keep life in the body. The Esqui- 
maux drink it in the north, often. We must take 
the oil of the light-house to keep us from starving 
until the supply-boat comes down." 

"But how shall we get it?" asked the others. 




1 am the keeper of the light." 



The Keeper of the Light 1 1 7 

*'It is locked up. Nataline Fortin has the key. 
Will she give it?" 

''Give it ?" growled Thibault. "Name of a name ! 
of course she will give it. She must. Is not a life, 
the life of all of us, more than a light?" 

A self-appointed committee of three, with Thi- 
bault at the head, waited upon Nataline without 
delay, told her their plan, and asked for the key. 
She thought it over silently for a few minutes, and 
then refused point-blank. 

"No," she said, "I will not give the key. That 
oil is for the lamp. If you take it, the lamp will 
not be lighted on the first of April ; it will not be 
burning when the supply-boat comes. For me, that 
would be shame, disgrace, worse than death. I am 
the keeper of the light. You shall not have the 
oil." 

They argued with her, pleaded with her, tried to 
browbeat her. She was a rock. Her round under- 
jaw was set like a steel trap. Her lips straightened 
into a white line. Her eyebrows drew together, 
and her eyes grew black. 

"No," she cried, "I tell you no, no, a thousand 
times no. All in this house I will share with you. 
But not one drop of what belongs to the light! 
Never !" 

Later in the afternoon the priest came to see her ; 
a thin, pale young man, bent with the hardships of 
his life, and with sad dreams in his sunken eyes. 
He talked with her very gently and kindly. 

"Think well, my daughter; think seriously what 



1 1 8 Stories 

you do. Is it not our first duty to save human life ? 
Surely that must be according to the will of God. 
Will you refuse to obey it?" 

Nataline was trembling a little now. Her brows 
were unlocked. The tears stood in her eyes and 
ran down her cheeks. She was twisting her hands 
together. 

"My father," she answered, "I desire to do the 
will of God. But how shall I know it? Is it not 
His first command that we should serve Him faith- 
fully in the duty which He has given us ? He gave 
me this light to keep. My father kept it. He is 
dead. If I am unfaithful what will he say to me? 
Besides, the supply-boat is coming soon — I have 
thought of this — when it comes it will bring food. 
But if the light is out, the boat may be lost. That 
would be the punishment for my sin. No, we must 
trust God. He will keep the people. I will keep 
the light." 

The priest looked at her long and steadily. A 
glow came into his face. He put his hand on her 
shoulder. "You shall follow your conscience," he 
said quietly. "Peace be with you, Nataline." 

That evening just at dark Marcel came. She let 
him take her in his arms and kiss her. She felt 
like a little child, tired and weak. 

"Well," he whispered, "you have done bravely, 
sweetheart. You were right not to give the key. 
That would have been a shame to you. But it is 
all settled now. They will have the oil without 
your fault. To-night they are going out to the 



The Keeper of the Light 1 1 9 

light-house to break in and take what they want. 

You need not know. There will be no blame " 

She straightened in his arms as if an electric 
shock had passed through her. She sprang back, 
blazing with anger. 

''What?" she cried, "me a thief by roundabout 
— with my hand behind my back and my eyes shut ? 
Never. Do you think I care only for the blame? 
I tell you that is nothing. My light shall not be 
robbed, never, never!" 

She came close to him and took him by the shoul- 
ders. Their eyes were on a level. He was a strong 
man, but she was the stronger then. 

"Marcel Thibault," she said, "do you love me?" 
"My faith," he gasped, "I do. You know I do." 
"Then listen," she continued; "this is what you 
are going to do. You are going down to the shore 
at once to make ready the big canoe. I am going 
to get food enough to last us for the month. It 
will be a hard pinch, but it will do. Then we are 
going out to the island to-night, in less than an 
hour. Day after to-morrow is the first of April. 
Then we shall light the lantern, and it shall burn 
every night until the boat comes down. You hear? 
Now go: and be quick: and bring your gun." 



1 20 Stories 



IV 



They pushed off in the black darkness, among 
the fragments of ice that lay along the shore. They 
crossed the strait in silence, and hid their canoe 
among the rocks on the island. They carried their 
stuff up to the house and locked it in the kitchen. 
Then they unlocked the tower, and went in. Marcel 
with his shot-gun, and Nataline with her father's 
old rifle. They fastened the door again, and bolted 
it, and sat down in the dark to wait. 

Presently they heard the grating of the prow of 
the barge on the stones below, the steps of men 
stumbling up the steep path, and voices mingled in 
confused talk. The glimmer of a couple of lan- 
terns went bobbing in and out among the rocks and 
bushes. There was a little crowd of eight or ten 
men, and they came on carelessly, chattering and 
laughing. Three of them carried axes, and three 
others a heavy log of wood which they had picked 
up on their way. 

"The log is better than the axes," said on-e; 
"take it in your hands this way, two of you on one 
side, another on the opposite side in the middle. 
Then swing it back and forward and let it go. 
The door will come down, I tell you, like a sheet 
of paper. But wait till I give the word, then swing 
hard. One — two " 

"Stop!" cried Nataline, throwing open the little 
window. "If you dare to touch that door, I shoot." 

She thrust out the barrel of the rifle, and Mar- 



The Keeper of the Light 121 

eel's shot-gun appeared beside it. The old rifle was 
not loaded, but who knew that ? Besides, both bar- 
rels of the shot-gun were full. 

There was amazement in the crowd outside the 
tower, and consternation, and then anger. 

The gang muttered, cursed, threatened, looked 
at the guns, and went off to their boat. 

"It is murder that you will do," one of them 
called out ; "you are a murderess, you Mademoiselle 
Fortin! you cause the people to die of hunger!" 

"Not I," she answered; "that is as the good God 
pleases. No matter. The light shall burn." 

The next day they put the light in order, and the 
following night they kindled it. They still feared 
another attack from the mainland, and thought it 
needful that one of them should be on guard all the 
time, though the machine itself was working beau- 
tifully and needed little watching. Nataline took 
the night duty ; it was her own choice ; she loved the 
charge of the lamp. Marcel was on duty through 
the day. They were together for three or four 
hours in the morning and in the evening. 

It was not a desperate vigil like that affair with 
the broken clock-work eight years before. There 
was no weary turning of the crank. There was 
just enough work to do about the house and the 
tower to keep them busy. The weather was fair. 
The worst thing was the short supply of food. But 
though they were hungry, they were not starving. 
And Nataline still played the fife. She jested, she 
sang, she told long fairy stories while they sat in 



122 Stories 

the kitchen. Marcel admitted that it was not at all 
a bad arrangement. 

On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of April 
the clouds came down from the north, not a long 
furious tempest, but a brief, sharp storm, with con- 
siderable wind and a whirling, blinding fall of 
April snow. It was a bad night for boats at sea, 
confusing, bewildering, a night when the lighthouse 
had to do its best. Nataline was in the tower all 
night, tending the lamp, watching the clock-work. 
Once it seemed to her that the lantern was so cov- 
ered with snow that light could not shine through. 
She got her long brush and scraped the snow away. 
It was cold work, but she gloried in it. The bright 
eye of the tower, winking, winking steadily through 
the storm, seemed to be the sign of her power in 
the world. It was hers. She kept it shining. 

When morning came the wind was still blowing 
fitfully offshore, but the snow had almost ceased. 
Nataline stopped the clock-work, and was just 
climbing up into the lantern to put out the lamp, 
when Marcel's voice hailed her. 

"Come down, Nataline, come down quick. Make 
haste!" 

She turned and hurried out, not knowing what 
was to come; perhaps a message of trouble from 
the main-land, perhaps a new assault on the light- 
house. 

As she came out of the tower, her brown eyes 
heavy from the night-watch, her dark face pale 
from the cold, she saw Marcel standing on the 



The Keeper of the Light 123 

rocky knoll beside the house and pointing shore- 
ward. 

She ran up beside him and looked. There, in 
the deep water between the island and the point, 
lay the supply-boat, rocking quietly on the waves. 

It flashed upon her in a moment what it meant — 
the end of her fight, relief for the village, victory! 
And the light that had guided the little ship safe 
through the stormy night into the harbor was hers. 

She turned and looked up at the lamp, still 
burning. 

"I kept you !" she cried. 

Then she turned to Marcel ; the color rose quickly 
in her cheeks, the light sparkled in her eyes; she 
smiled, and held out both her hands, whispering, 
"Now you shall keep me!" 

There was a fine wedding on the last day of 
April, and from that time the island took its new 
name — the Isle of the Wise Virgin. 



A HANDFUL OF CLAY 

There was a handful of clay in the bank of a 
river. It was only common clay, coarse and heavy ; 
but it had high thoughts of its own value, and 
wonderful dreams of the great place which it was 
to fill in the world when the time came for its 
virtues to be discovered. 

Overhead, in the spring sunshine, the trees whis- 
pered together of the glory which descended upon 
them when the delicate blossoms and leaves began 
to expand, and the forest glowed with fair, clear 
colors, as if the dust of thousands of rubies and 
emeralds were hanging, in soft clouds, above the 
earth. 

The fiowers, surprised with the joy of beauty, 
bent their heads to one another, as the wind ca- 
ressed them, and said: ''Sisters, how lovely you 
have become. You make the day bright." 

The river, glad of new strength and rejoicing 
in the unison of all its waters, murmured to the 
shores in music, telling of its release from icy fet- 
ters, its swift flight from the snow-clad mountains, 
and the mighty work to which it was hurrying — 
the wheels of many mills to be turned, and great 
ships to be floated to the sea. 
124 



A Handful of Clay 125 

Waiting blindly in its bed, the clay comforted 
itself with lofty hopes. "My time will come," it 
said. ''I was not made to be hidden forever. Glory 
and beauty and honor are coming to me in due 
season." 

One day the clay felt itself taken from the place 
where it had waited so long. A flat blade of iron 
passed beneath it, and lifted it, and tossed it into 
a cart with other lumps of clay, and it was carried 
far away, as it seemed, over a rough and stony 
road. But it was not afraid, nor discouraged, for 
it said to itself: "This is necessary. The path to 
glory is always rugged. Now I am on my way to 
play a great part in the world." 

But the hard journey was nothing compared 
with the tribulation and distress that came after 
it. The clay was put into a trough and mixed and 
beaten and stirred and trampled. It seemed almost 
unbearable. But there was consolation in the 
thought that something very fine and noble was 
certainly coming out of all this trouble. The clay 
felt sure that, if it could only wait long enough, 
a wonderful reward was in store for it. 

Then it was put upon a swiftly turning wheel, 
and whirled around until it seemed as if it must fly 
into a thousand pieces. A strange power pressed 
it and moulded it, as it revolved, and through all 
the dizziness and pain it felt that it was taking a 
new form. 

Then an unknown hand put it into an oven, and 
fires were kindled about it — fierce and penetrating 



126 Stories 

— hotter than all the heats of summer that had 
ever brooded upon the bank of the river. But 
through all, the clay held itself together and en- 
dured its trials, in the confidence of a great future. 
''Surely," it thought, ''I am intended for some- 
thing very splendid, since such .pains are taken 
with me. Perhaps I am fashioned for the orna- 
ment of a temple, or a precious vase for the table 
of a king." 

At last the baking was finished. The clay was 
taken from the furnace and set down upon a board, 
in the cool air, under the blue sky. The tribulation 
was passed. The reward was at hand. 

Close beside the board there was a pool of water, 
not very deep, nor very clear, but calm enough to 
reflect, with impartial truth, every image that fell 
upon it. There, for the first time, as it was lifted 
from the board, the clay saw its new shape, the 
reward of all its patience and pain, the consum- 
mation of its hopes — a common flower-pot, straight 
and stiff, red and ugly. And then it felt that it 
was not destined for a king's house, nor for a pal- 
ace of art, because it was made without glory or 
beauty or honor; and it murmured against the un- 
known maker, saying, "Why hast thou made me 
thus?" 

Many days it passed in sullen discontent. Then 
it was filled with earth, and something — it knew 
not what — but something rough and brown and 
dead-looking, was thrust into the middle of the 
earth and covered over. The clay rebelled at this 



A Handful of Clay 127 

new disgrace. ''This is the worst of all that has 
happened to me, to be filled with dirt and rubbish. 
Surely I am a failure." 

But presently it was set in a greenhouse, where 
the sunlight fell warm upon it, and water was 
sprinkled over it, and day by day as it waited, a 
change began to come to it. Something was stir- 
ring within it — a new hope. Still it was ignorant, 
and knew not what the new hope meant. 

One day the clay was lifted again from its place, 
and carried into a great church. Its dream was 
coming true after all. It had a fine part to play in 
the world. Glorious music flowed over it. It was 
surrounded with flowers. Still it could not under- 
stand. So it whispered to another vessel of clay, 
like itself, close beside it, ''Why have they set me 
here? Why do all the people look toward us?" 
And the other vessel answered, "Do you not know ? 
You are carrying a royal sceptre of lilies. Their 
petals are white as snow, and the heart of them is 
like pure gold. The people look this way because 
the flower is the most wonderful in the world. And 
the root of it is in your heart." 

Then the clay was content, and silently thanked 
its maker, because, though an earthen vessel, it 
held so great a treasure. 



THE FIRST CHRISTMAS-TREE 



The day before Christmas, in the year of our 
Lord 724. A little company of pilgrims, less than 
a score of men, were travelling slowly northward 
through the wide forests that rolled over the hills 
of central Germany. At the head of the band 
marched Winfried of England, whose name in the 
Roman tongue was Boniface, and whom men called 
the Apostle of Germany. A great preacher ; a won- 
derful scholar; but, more than all, a daring trav- 
eller, a venturesome pilgrim, a priest of romance. 

He had left his home and his fair estate in Wes- 
sex; he would not stay in the rich monastery of 
Nutescelle, even though they had chosen him as 
the abbot; he had refused a bishopric at the court 
of King Karl. Nothing would content him but to 
go out into the wild woods and preach to the 
heathen. 

Through the forests of Hesse and Thuringia, 
and along the borders of Saxony, he had wandered 
for years, with a handful of companions, sleeping 
under the trees, crossing mountains and marshes, 
now here, now there, never satisfied with ease and 
comfort, always in love with hardship and danger, 
128 



The First Christmas-Tree 129 

What a man he was ! Fair and sHght, but 
straight as a spear and strong as an oaken staff. 
His face was still young; the smooth skin was 
bronzed by wind and sun. His gray eyes, clean 
and kind, flashed like fire when he spoke of his 
adventures, and of the evil deeds of the false priests 
with whom he contended. 

He was now clad in a tunic of fur, with his long 
black robe girt high above his waist, so that it 
might not hinder his stride. His hunter's boots 
were crusted with snow. Drops of ice sparkled 
like jewels along the thongs that bound his legs. 
There were no other ornaments of his dress except 
the bishop's cross hanging on his breast, and the 
silver clasp that fastened his cloak about his neck. 
He carried a strong, tall staff in his hand, fash- 
ioned at the top into the form of a cross. 

Close beside him, keeping step like a familiar 
comrade, was young Prince Gregor. Long marches 
through the wilderness had stretched his legs and 
broadened his back, and made a man of him in 
stature as well as in spirit. His jacket and cap 
were of wolf-skin, and on his shoulder he carried 
an axe, with broad, shining blade. He was a 
mighty woodsman now, and could make a spray 
of chips fly around him as he hewed his way 
through the trunk of a pine-tree. 

Behind these leaders followed a pair of team- 
sters, guiding a rude sledge, loaded with food and 
the equipage of the camp, and drawn by two big, 
shaggy horses, blowing thick clouds of steam from 



130 Stories 

their frosty nostrils. Tiny icicles hung from the 
hairs on their lips. Their flanks were smoking. 
They sank above the fetlocks at every step in the 
soft snow. 

Last of all came the rear guard, armed with 
bows and javelins. It was no child's play, in 
those days, to cross Europe afoot. 

The weird woodland, sombre and illimitable, 
covered hill and vale, table-land and mountain- 
peak. There were wide moors where the wolves 
hunted in packs as if the devil drove them, and 
tangled thickets where the lynx and the boar made 
their lairs. Fierce bears lurked among the rocky 
passes, and had not yet learned to fear the face 
of man. The gloomy recesses of the forest gave 
shelter to inhabitants who were still more cruel 
and dangerous than beasts of prey — outlaws and 
sturdy robbers and mad were-wolves and bands of 
wandering pillagers. 

The travellers were surrounded by an ocean of 
trees, so vast, so full of endless billows, that it 
seemed to be pressing on every side to overwhelm 
them. Gnarled oaks, with branches twisted and 
knotted as if in rage, rose in groves like tidal 
waves. Smooth forests of beech-trees, round and 
gray, swept over the knolls and slopes of land in 
a mighty ground-swell. But most of all, the mul- 
titude of pines and firs, innumerable and monoto- 
nous, with straight, stark trunks, and branches 
woven together in an unbroken flood of darkest 
green, crowded through the valleys and over the 



The First Christmas-Tree 131 

hills, rising on the highest ridges into ragged crests, 
like the foaming edge of breakers. 

Through this sea of shadows ran a narrow 
stream of shining whiteness — an ancient Roman 
road, covered with snow. It was as if some great 
ship had ploughed through the green ocean long 
ago, and left behind it a thick, smooth wake of 
foam. Along this open track the travellers held 
their way — heavily, for the drifts were deep ; war- 
ily, for the hard winter had driven many packs of 
wolves down from the moors. 

The steps of the pilgrims were noiseless ; but the 
sledges creaked over the dry snow, and the panting 
of the horses throbbed through the still air. The 
pale-blue shadows on the western side of the road 
grew longer. The sun, declining through its shal- 
low arch, dropped behind the tree-tops. Darkness 
followed swiftly, as if it had been a bird of prey 
waiting for this sign to swoop down upon the 
world. 

"Father," said Gregor to the leader, "surely this 
day's march is done. It is time to rest, and eat, 
and sleep. If we press onward now, we cannot 
see our steps." 

Winfried laughed. "Nay, my son Gregor," said 
he, "I am not minded to spare thy legs or mine, 
until we come farther on our way, and do what 
must be done this night. Draw thy belt tighter, 
my son, and hew me out this tree that is fallen 
across the road, for our camp-ground is not here." 

The youth obeyed; two of the foresters sprang 



132 Stories 

to help him; and while the soft fir-wood yielded 
to the stroke of the axes, and the snow flew from 
the bending branches, Winfried turned and spoke 
to his followers in a cheerful voice, that refreshed 
them like wine. 

"Courage, brothers, and forward yet a little! 
The moon will light us presently, and the path is 
plain. Well know I that the journey is weary; 
and my own heart wearies also for the home in 
England, where those I love are keeping feast this 
Christmas-eve. But we have work to do before we 
feast to-night. For this is the Yule-tide, and the 
heathen people of the forest are gathered at the 
thunder-oak of Geismar to worship their god, Thor. 
Strange things will be seen there, and deeds which 
make the soul black. But we are sent to lighten 
their darkness ; and we will teach our kinsmen to 
keep a Christmas with us such as the woodland 
has never known. Forward, then, and stiffen up 
the feeble knees!" 

A murmur of assent came from the men. Even 
the horses seemed to take fresh heart. They flat- 
tened their backs to draw the heavy loads, and 
blew the frost from their nostrils as they pushed 
ahead. 

The night grew broader and less oppressive. A 
gate of brightness was opened secretly somewhere 
in the sky. Higher and higher swelled the clear 
moon-flood, until it poured over the eastern wall 
of forest into the road. A drove of wolves howled 
faintly in the distance, but they were receding, and 




The fields around lay bare to the ; 



The First Christmas-Tree 133 

the sound soon died away. The stars sparkled 
merrily through the stringent air; the small, round 
moon shone like silver; little breaths of dreaming 
wind wandered across the pointed fir-tops, as the 
pilgrims toiled bravely onward, following their clew 
of light through a labyrinth of darkness. 

After a while the road began to open out a little. 
There were spaces of meadow-land, fringed with 
alders, behind which a boisterous river ran clash- 
ing through spears of ice. 

Then the road plunged again into a dense thicket, 
traversed it, and climbing to the left, emerged sud- 
denly upon a glade, round and level except at the 
northern side, where a hillock was crowned with a 
huge oak-tree. It towered above the heath, a giant 
with contorted arms, beckoning to the host of lesser 
trees. "Here," cried Winfried, as his eyes flashed 
and his hand lifted his heavy staff, ''here is the 
Thunder-oak; and here the cross of Christ shall 
break the hammer of the false god Thor." 



II 



Withered leaves still clung to the branches of the 
oak : torn and faded banners of the departed sum- 
mer. The bright crimson of autumn had long since 
disappeared, bleached away by the storms and the 
cold. But to-night these tattered remnants of glory 
were red again: ancient blood-stains against the 



134 Stories 

dark-blue sky. For an immense fire had been kin- 
dled in front of the tree. Tongues of ruddy flame, 
fountains of ruby sparks, ascended through the 
spreading limbs and flung a fierce illumination up- 
ward and around. The pale, pure moonlight that 
bathed the surrounding forests was quenched and 
eclipsed here. Not a beam of it sifted through the 
branches of the oak. It stood like a pillar of cloud 
between the still light of heaven and the crackling, 
flashing fire of earth. 

But the fire itself was invisible to Winfried and 
his companions. A great throng of people were 
gathered around it in a half-circle, their backs to 
the open glade, their faces toward the oak. Seen 
against that glowing background, it was but the 
silhouette of a crowd, vague, black, formless, mys- 
terious. 

The travellers paused for a moment at the edge 
of the thicket, and took counsel together. 

'Tt is the assembly of the tribe," said one of the 
foresters, "the great night of the council. I heard 
of it three days ago, as we passed through one of 
the villages. All who swear by the old gods have 
been summoned. They will sacrifice a steed to the 
god of war, and drink blood, and eat horse-flesh 
to make them strong. It will be at the peril of our 
lives if we approach them. At least we must hide 
the cross, if we would escape death." 

"Hide me no cross," cried Winfried, lifting his 
staff, "for I have come to show it, and to make 
these blind folk see its power. There is more to 



The First Christmas-Tree 135 

be done here to-night than the slaying of a steed, 
and a greater evil to be stayed than the shameful 
eating of meat sacrificed to idols. I have seen it 
in a dream. Here the cross must stand and be 
our rede." 

At his command the sledge was left in the bor- 
der of the wood, with two of the men to guard it, 
and the rest of the company moved forward across 
the open ground. They approached unnoticed, for 
all the multitude were looking intently toward the 
fire at the foot of the oak. 

Then Winfried's voice rang out, "Hail, ye sons 
of the forest ! A stranger claims the warmth of 
your fire in the winter night." 

Swiftly, and as with a single motion, a thousand 
eyes were bent upon the speaker. The semicircle 
opened silently in the middle; Winfried entered 
with his followers; it closed again behind them. 

Then, as they looked round the curving ranks, 
they saw that the hue of the assemblage was not 
black, but white — dazzling, radiant, solemn. White, 
the robes of the women clustered together at the 
points of the wide crescent; white, the glittering 
byrnies of the warriors standing in close ranks ; 
white, the fur mantles of the aged men who held 
the central place in the circle; white, with the 
shimmer of silver ornaments and the purity of 
lamb's-wool, the raiment of a little group of chil- 
dren who stood close by the fire; white, with awe 
and fear, the faces of all who looked at them ; and 
over all the flickering, dancing radiance of the 



136 Stories 

flames played and glimmered like a faint, vanishing 
tinge of blood on snow. 

The only figure untouched by the glow was the 
old priest, Hunrad, with his long, spectral robe, 
flowing hair and beard, and dead-pale face, who 
stood with his back to the fire and advanced slowly 
to meet the strangers. 

"Who are you? Whence come you, and what 
seek you here?" 

"Your kinsman am I, of the German brother- 
hood," answered Winfried, "and from England, 
beyond the sea, have I come to bring you a greet- 
ing from that land, and a message from the All- 
Father, whose servant I am." 

"Welcome, then," said Hunrad, "welcome, kins- 
man, and be silent ; for what passes here is too high 
to wait, and must be done before the moon crosses 
the middle heaven, unless, indeed, thou hast some 
sign or token from the gods. Canst thou work 
miracles ?" 

The question came sharply, as if a sudden gleam 
of hope had flashed through the tangle of the old 
priest's mind. But Winfried's voice sank lower and 
a cloud of disappointment passed over his face as 
he replied : "Nay, miracles have I never wrought, 
though I have heard of many; but the All-Father 
has given no power to my hands save such as be- 
longs to common man." 

"Stand still, then, thou common man," said 
Hunrad scornfully, "and behold what the gods 
have called us hither to do. This night is the 



The First Christmas-Tree 137 

death-night of the sun-god, Baldur the Beautiful, 
beloved of gods and men. This night is the hour 
of darkness and the power of winter, of sacrifice 
and mighty fear. This night the great Thor, the 
god of thunder and war, to whom this oak is sacred, 
is grieved for the death of Baldur, and angry with 
this people because they have forsaken his worship. 
Long is it since an offering has been laid upon his 
altar, long since the roots of his holy tree have been 
fed with blood. Therefore its leaves have withered 
before the time, and its boughs are heavy with 
death. Therefore the Slavs and the Wends have 
beaten us in battle. Therefore the harvests have 
failed, and the wolf-hordes have ravaged the folds, 
and the strength has departed from the bow, and 
the wood of the spear has broken, and the wild 
boar has slain the huntsman. Therefore the plague 
has fallen on our dwellings, and the dead are more 
than the living in all our villages. Answer me, ye 
people, are not these things true?" 

A hoarse sound of approval ran through the 
circle. A chant, in which the voices of the men 
and women blended, like the shrill wind in the pine- 
trees above the rumbling thunder of a waterfall, 
rose and fell in rude cadences. 

O Thor, the Thunderer, 
Mighty and merciless, 
Spare us from smiting! 
Heave not thy hammer, 
Angry, against us; 



138 Stories 

Plague not thy people. 
Take from our treasure 
Richest of ransom. 
Silver we send thee, 
Jewels and javelins, 
Goodliest garments, 
All our possessions. 
Priceless, we proffer. 
Sheep will we slaughter, 
Steeds will we sacrifice; 
Bright blood shall bathe thee, 
G tree of Thunder, 
Life-floods shall lave thee. 
Strong wood of wonder. 
Mighty, have mercy. 
Smite us no more. 
Spare us and save us. 
Spare us, Thor! Thor! 

With two great shouts the song ended, and a 
stillness followed so intense that the crackling of 
the fire was heard distinctly. The old priest stood 
silent for a moment. His shaggy brows swept 
down over his eyes like ashes quenching flame. 
Then he lifted his face and spoke. 

"None of these things will please the god. More 
costly is the ofifering that shall cleanse your sin, 
more precious the crimson dew that shall send new 
life into this holy tree of blood. Thor claims your 
dearest and your noblest gift." 

Htmrad moved nearer to the group of children 
who stood watching the fire and the swarms of 



The First Christmas-Tree 139 

spark-serpents darting upward. They had heeded 
none of the priest's words, and did not notice now 
that he approached them, so eager were they to 
see which fiery snake would go highest among the 
oak branches. Foremost among them, and most 
intent on the pretty game, was a boy Hke a sun- 
beam, slender and quick, with blithe brown eyes 
and laughing lips. The priest's hand was laid 
upon his shoulder. The boy turned and looked up 
in his face. 

"Here," said the old man, with his voice vibrat- 
ing as when a thick rope is strained by a ship 
swinging from her moorings, *'here is the chosen 
one, the eldest son of the chief, the darling of the 
people. Hearken, Bernhard, wilt thou go to Val- 
halla, where the heroes dwell with the gods, to bear 
a message to Thor?" 

The boy answered, swift and clear: 

*^Yes, priest, I will go if my father bids me. Is 
it far away? Shall I run quickly? Must I take 
my bow and arrows for the wolves?" 

The boy's father, the chieftain Gundhar, stand- 
ing among his bearded warriors, drew his breath 
deep, and leaned so heavily on the handle of his 
spear that the wood cracked. And his wife, Irma, 
bending forward from the ranks of women, pushed 
the golden hair from her forehead with one hand. 
The other dragged at the silver chain about her 
neck until the rough links pierced her flesh, and 
the red drops fell unheeded on her breast. 

A sigh passed through the crowd, like the mur- 



140 Stories 

mur of the forest before the storm breaks. Yet 
no one spoke save Hunrad : 

"Yes, my prince, both bow and spear shalt thou 
have, for the way is long, and thou art a brave 
huntsman. But in darkness thou must journey for 
a Httle space, and with eyes bhndfolded. Fearest 
thou?" 

"Naught fear I," said the boy, "neither dark- 
ness, nor the great bear, nor the were-wolf. For 
I am Gundhar's son, and the defender of my folk." 

Then the priest led the child in his raiment of 
lamb's-wool to a broad stone in front of the fire. 
He gave him his little bow tipped with silver, and 
his spear with shining head of steel. He bound 
the child's eyes with a white cloth, and bade him 
kneel beside the stone with his face to the east. 
Unconsciously the wide arc of spectators drew in- 
ward toward the centre. Winfried moved noise- 
lessly until he stood close behind the priest. 

The old man stooped to lift a black hammer of 
stone from the ground — the sacred hammer of the 
god Thor. Summoning all the strength of his 
withered arms, he swung it high in the air. It 
poised for an instant above the child's fair head — 
then turned to fall. 

One keen cry shrilled out from where the women 
stood: "Me! take me! not Bernhard!" 

The flight of the mother toward her child was 
swift as the falcon's swoop. But swifter still was 
the hand of the deliverer. 

Winfried's heavy staff thrust mightily against the 



The First Christmas-Tree 141 

hammer's handle as it fell. Sideways it glanced 
from the old man's grasp, and the black stone, 
striking on the altar's edge, split in twain. A 
shout of awe and joy rolled along the living cir- 
cle. The branches of the oak shivered. The flames 
leaped higher. As the shout died away the people 
saw the lady Irma, with her arms clasped round 
her child, and above them, on the altar-stone, Win- 
fried, his face shining like the face of an angel. 



Ill 



A swift mountain-flood rolling down its channel ; 
a huge rock tumbling from the hill-side and fall- 
ing in mid-stream: the baffled waters broken and 
confused, pausing in their flow, dash high against 
the rock, foaming and murmuring, with divided 
impulse, uncertain whether to turn to the right or 
the left. 

Even so Winfried's bold deed fell into the midst 
of the thoughts and passions of the council. They 
were at a standstill. Anger and wonder, reverence 
and joy and confusion surged through the crowd. 
They knew not which way to move: to resent the 
intrusion of the stranger as an insult to their gods, 
or to welcome him as the rescuer of their prince. 

The old priest crouched by the altar, silent. Con- 
flicting counsels troubled the air. Let the sacrifice 
go forward ; the gods must be appeased. Nay, the 
boy must not die; bring the chieftain's best horse 



142 Stories 

and slay it in his stead ; it will be enough ; the 
holy tree loves the blood of horses. Not so, there 
is a better counsel yet ; seize the stranger whom the 
gods have led hither as a victim and make his life 
pay the forfeit of his daring. 

The withered leaves on the oak rustled and whis- 
pered overhead. The fire flared and sank again. 
The angry voices clashed against each other and 
fell like opposing waves. Then the chieftain Gund- 
har struck the earth with his spear and gave his 
decision. 

"All have spoken, but none are agreed. There 
is no voice of the council. Keep silence now, and 
let the stranger speak. His words shall give us 
judgment, whether he is to live or to die." 

Winfried lifted himself high upon the altar, drew 
a roll of parchment from his bosom, and began to 
read. 

''A letter from the great Bishop of Rome, who 
sits on a golden throne, to the people of the forest, 
Hessians and Thuringians, Franks and Saxons." 

A murmur of awe ran through the crowd. 

Winfried went on to read the letter, translating 
it into the speech of the people. 

'*We have sent unto you our Brother Boniface, 
and appointed him your bishop, that he may teach 
you the only true faith, and baptize you, and lead 
you back from the ways of error to the path of 
salvation. Hearken to him in all things like a 
father. Bow your hearts to his teaching. He 
comes not for earthly gain, but for the gain of your 



The First Christmas-Tree 143 

souls. Depart from evil works. Worship not the 
false gods, for they are devils. Offer no more 
bloody sacrifices, nor eat the flesh of horses, but do 
as our Brother Boniface commands you. Build a 
house for him that he may dwell among you, and 
a church where you may offer your prayers to the 
only living God, the Almighty King of Heaven." 

It was a splendid message : proud, strong, peace- 
ful, loving. The dignity of the words imposed 
mightily upon the hearts of the people. They were 
quieted as men who have listened to a lofty strain 
of music. 

"Tell us, then," said Gundhar, "what is the word 
that thou bringest to us from the Almighty ? What 
is thy counsel for the tribes of the woodland on 
this night of sacrifice?" 

"This is the word, and this is the counsel," an- 
swered Winfried. "Not a drop of blood shall fall 
to-night, save that which pity has drawn from the 
breast of your princess, in love for her child. Not 
a life shall be blotted out in the darkness to-night; 
but the great shadow of the tree which hides you 
from the light of heaven shall be swept away. For 
this is the birthnight of the white Christ, son of 
the All-Father, and Saviour of mankind. Since He 
has come to earth the bloody sacrifice must cease. 
The dark Thor, on whom you vainly call, is dead. 
His power in the world is broken. Will you serve 
a helpless god? See, my brothers, you call this 
tree his oak. Does he dwell here? Does he pro- 
tect it?" 



144 Stories 

A troubled voice of assent rose from the throng. 
The people stirred uneasily. Women covered their 
eyes. Hunrad lifted his head and muttered hoarse- 
ly, "Thor! take vengeance! Thor!" 

Winfried beckoned to Gregor. "Bring the axes, 
thine and one for me. Now, young woodsman, 
show thy craft! The king-tree of the forest must 
fall, and swiftly, or all is lost!" 

The two men took their places facing each other, 
one on each side of the oak. Their cloaks were 
flung aside, their heads bare. Carefully they felt 
the ground with their feet, seeking a firm grip of 
the earth. Firmly they grasped the axe-helves and 
swung the shining blades. 

"Tree-god!" cried Winfried, "art thou angry? 
Thus we smite thee!" 

"Tree-god !" answered Gregor, "art thou mighty ? 
Thus we fight thee !" 

Clang! clang! the alternate strokes beat time 
upon the hard, ringing wood. The axe-heads glit- 
tered in their rhythmic flight, like fierce eagles cir- 
cling about their quarry. 

The broad flakes of wood flew from the deepen- 
ing gashes in the sides of the oak. The huge trunk 
quivered. There was a shuddering in the branches. 
Then the great wonder of Winfried's life came to 
pass. 

Out of the stillness of the winter night a mighty 
rushing noise sounded overhead. 

Was it the ancient gods on their white battle- 
steeds, with their black hounds of wrath and their 



The First Christmas-Tree 145 

arrows of lightning, sweeping through the air to 
destroy their foes? 

A strong, whirHng wind passed over the tree- 
tops. It gripped the oak by its branches and tore 
it from the roots. Backward it fell, like a ruined 
tower, groaning and crashing as it split asunder in 
four great pieces. 

Winfried let his axe drop, and bowed his head 
for a moment in the presence of almighty power. 

Then he turned to the people : "Here is the tim- 
ber," he cried, "already felled and split for your 
new building. On this spot shall rise a chapel to 
the true God and his servant St. Peter. 

"And here," said he, as his eyes fell on a young 
fir-tree, standing straight and green, with its top 
pointing toward the stars, amid the divided ruins 
of the fallen oak, "here is the living tree, with no 
stain of blood upon it, that shall be the sign of 
your new worship. See how it points to the sky. 
Call it the tree of the Christ-child. Take it up 
and carry it to the chieftain's hall. You shall go 
no more into the shadows of the forest to keep your 
feasts with secret rites of shame. You shall keep 
them at home, with laughter and songs and rites 
of love. The thunder-oak has fallen, and I think 
the day is coming when there shall not be a home 
in all Germany where the children are not gath- 
ered around the green fir-tree to rejoice in the 
birthnight of Christ." 

So they took the little fir from its place, and 
carried it in joyous procession to the edge of the 



146 Stories 

glade, and laid it on the sledge. The horses tossed 
their heads and drew their load bravely, as if the 
new burden had made it lighter. 

When they came to the house of Gundhar, he 
bade them throw open the doors of the hall and 
set the tree in the midst of it. They kindled lights 
among the branches until it seemed to be tangled 
full of fire-flies. The children encircled it, wonder- 
ing, and the sweet odor of the balsam filled the 
house. 

Then Winfried stood beside the chair of Gund- 
har, on the dais at the end of the hall, and told 
the story of Bethlehem ; of the babe in the manger, 
of the shepherds on the hills, of the host of angels 
and their midnight song. All the people listened, 
charmed into stillness. 

But the boy Bernhard, on Irma's knee, folded 
in her soft arms, grew restless as the story length- 
ened, and began to prattle softly at his mother's 
ear. 

"Mother," whispered the child, "why did you cry 
out so loud when the priest was going to send me 
to Valhalla?" 

"Oh, hush, my child," answered the mother, and 
pressed him closer to her side. 

"Mother," whispered the boy again, laying his 
finger on the stains upon her breast, "see, your 
dress is red ! What are these stains ? Did some- 
one hurt you?" 

The mother closed his mouth with a kiss. "Dear, 
be still, and listen!" 



The First Ckrzslmas-Tree 147 

The boy obeyed. His eyes were heavy with 
sleep. But he heard the last words of Winfried 
as he spoke of the angelic messengers, flying over 
the hills of Judea and singing as they flew. The 
child wondered and dreamed and listened. Sud- 
denly his face grew bright. He put his lips close 
to Irma's cheek again. 

"Oh, mother!" he whispered very low, "do not 
speak. Do you hear them? Those angels have 
come back again. They are singing now behind 
the tree." 

And some say that it was true; but some say 
that it was the pilgrims whom the child heard, 
singing their Christmas carol. 



PART IV 
BITS OF BLUE-SKY PHILOSOPHY 



THE ARROW 

Life is an arrow — therefore you must know 
What mark to aim at, how to use the bow — ■ 
Then draw it to the head, and let it go ! 



FOUR THINGS 

Four things a man must learn to do 
If he would make his record true: 
To think without confusion clearly; 
To love his fellow-men sincerely; 
To act from honest motives purely; 
To trust in God and Heaven securely. 



LIFE 

Let me but live my life from year to year, 
With forward face and unreluctant soul; 
Not hurrying to, nor turning from, the goal ; 

Not mourning for the things that disappear 

In the dim past, nor holding back in fear 

From what the future veils ; but with a whole 
And happy heart, that pays its toll 

To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer. 
151 



I52 Bits of Blue- Sky Philosophy 

So let the way wind up the hill or down, 

O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy 
Still seeking what I sought when but a boy, 
New friendship, high adventure, and a crown, 
My heart will keep the courage of the quest, 
And hope the road's last turn will be the best. 



WORK 

Let me but do my work from day to day, 
In field or forest, at the desk or loom. 
In roaring market-place or tranquil room; 

Let me but find it in my heart to say, 

When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, 

"This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; 
Of all who live, I am the one by whom 

This work can best be done in the right way." 

Then shall I see it not too great, nor small. 
To suit my spirit and to prove my powers ; 
Then shall I cheerful greet the laboring hours, 
And cheerful turn, when the long shadows fall 
At eventide, to play and love and rest. 
Because I know for me my work is best. 



The Gentle Life 153 



THE GENTLE LIFE^ 

"I WILL give you four choice rules for the attain- 
ment of that unhastened quietude of mind whereof 
we did lately discourse. 

''First. — You shall learn to desire nothing in the 
world so much but that you can be happy without it. 

''Second. — You shall seek that which you desire 
only by such means as are fair and lawful, and this 
will leave you without bitterness toward men or 
shame before God. 

"Third. — You shall take pleasure in the time 
while you are seeking, even though you obtain not 
immediately that which you seek; for the purpose 
of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but 
also to find enjoyment by the way. 

"Fourth. — When you attain that which you have 
desired, you shall think more of the kindness of 
your fortune than of the greatness of your skill. 
This will make you grateful, and ready to share 
with others that which Providence hath bestowed 
upon you ; and truly this is both reasonable and 
profitable, for it is but little that any of us would 
catch in this world were not our luck better than 
our deserts." 

* * * * 5fC * 

"Trust me. Scholar, it is the part of wisdom to 
spend little of your time upon the things that vex 

^ The author puts these words into the mouth of Izaak Walton, 
who appears to him one day in his dreams. 



154 B^i^ ^/ Blue- Sky Philosophy 

and anger you, and much of your time upon the 
things that bring you quietness and confidence and 
good cheer. A friend made is better than an enemy 
punished. There is more of God in the peaceable 
beauty of this Httle wood-violet than in all the' an- 
gry disputations of the sects. We are nearer heaven 
when we listen to the birds than when we quarrel 
with our fellow-men. I am sure that none can enter 
into the spirit of Christ, His evangel, save those who 
willingly follow His invitation when He says, 'Come 
ye yourselves apart into a lonely place, and rest a 
while.' For since His blessed kingdom was first 
established in the green fields, by the lakeside, with 
humble fishermen for its subjects, the easiest way 
into it hath ever been through the wicket-gate of a 
lowly and grateful fellowship with Nature. He that 
feels not the beauty and blessedness and peace of the 
woods and meadows that God hath bedecked with 
flowers for him even while he is yet a sinner, how 
shall hi learn to enjoy the unfading bloom of the 
celestial country if he ever become a saint? 

"No, no, sir, he that departeth out of this world 
without perceiving that it is fair and full of inno- 
cent sweetness hata done little honor to the every- 
day miracles of divine beneficence ; and though by 
mercy he may obtain an entrance to heaven, it will 
be a strange place to him; and though he have 
studied all that is written in men's books of divinity, 
yet because he hath left the book of Nature un- 
turned, he will have much to learn and much to for- 
get. Do you think that to be blind to the beauties 



The Gentle Life ' 155 

of earth prepareth the heart to behold the glories of 
heaven? Nay, Scholar, I know that you are not 
of that opinion. But I can tell you another thing 
which perhaps you knew not. The heart that is 
blest with the glories of heaven ceaseth not to re- 
member and to love the beauties of this world. And 
of this love I am certain, because I feel it, and glad 
because it is a great blessing. 

"There are two sorts of seeds sown in our remem- 
brance by what we call the hand of fortune, the 
fruits of which do not wither, but grow sweeter for- 
ever and ever. The first is the seed of innocent 
pleasures, received in gratitude and enjoyed with 
good companions, of which pleasures we never grow 
weary of thinking, because they have enriched our 
hearts. The second is the seed of pure and gentle 
sorrows, borne in submission and with faithful love, 
and these also we never forget, but we come to cher- 
ish them with gladness instead of grief, because we 
see them changed into everlasting joys. And how 
this may be I cannot tell you now, for you would 
not understand me. But that it is so, believe me: 
for if you believe, you shall one day see it yourself." 



STORY OF THE AUTHOR^S LIFE 
FROM A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 



STORY OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE FROM 
A CHILD'S POINT OF VIEW 

My father was born in Germantown, Pennsyl- 
vania, on November lo, 1852 ; but when he was 
very young the family moved to Brooklyn, and it 
was there that most of his boyhood was spent. 
From the first his relationship with his father was 
a particularly beautiful one, for besides the natural 
trust and reverence, there grew up the closest kind 
of a friendship. It was as comrades that they went 
off for their day's holiday, escaping from the city 
and its flag pavements and brownstone fronts and 
getting out into the fresh country air, to walk 
through the woods and watch the leaves turn red 
and gold and brown and drop to the ground, or to 
skate in the winter, or to listen for the song of the 
first returning bluebird in the spring. It was under 
the wise and tender guidance of his father that the 
boy's instinctive love of nature grew and developed. 
The stages of this growth are seen in the chapter 
entitled "A Boy and a Rod." 

Boys went to college earlier in those days than 
they do now, and my father, who had prepared at 
the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, was ready to 
enter Princeton at the age of sixteen. Before he 
went to college he had tried his hand at writing a 
159 



i6o Story of the Author s Life 

little. During his college course he became deeply 
interested in it, and took the Clio Hall prizes for 
essays and speeches, besides writing along other 
lines. Thus his enthusiasm for literature was in- 
creasing all the time, and from the first the idea of 
writing was uppermost in his mind. He was Junior 
orator in 1872, and at graduation in 1873 his class- 
mates elected him for a class-day speaker. He also 
received honors from the faculty in belles-lettres 
and the English Salutatory in recognition of his 
general scholarship, besides the class of 1859 Prize 
in English Literature. Through all his course he 
was a leading man in the classroom, gymnasium, 
and all class and college affairs. 

After teaching for a year in Brooklyn he entered 
Princeton Theological Seminary, and graduated in 
1877. He spent the following year studying at the 
University of Berlin and in travel, and after being 
ordained in 1879 he was called to the United Con- 
gregational Church at Newport, R. I. In 188 1 he 
married my mother, and a few years later was called 
to the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York^ 
where he gave seventeen years of the hardest and 
most untiring labor to a work which did not end 
with his own congregation or the city itself, but 
touched thousands of people all over the country. 
But these years of his life were only a step aside to 
give a helping hand to two churches which were 
fast running down, and through it all he felt that 
his real work was literature, and it was in that field 
that his best work could be done, though the rush 



From a Child's Point of View i6i 

of city life at that time gave him very little chance 
to do it. 

So we were city children, but the woods were 
our inheritance and fishing became our favorite 
sport. Our earliest recollections of my father are 
in connection with fishing or camping expeditions. 
For when work pressed too heavily and his health 
showed signs of too much wear and tear, he would 
take a few days in the spring and spend them catch- 
ing the first trout of the season out of the Swift- 
water, a little river in the Alleghany Mountains in 
Pennsylvania. When he was away we always 
thought that he had ''gone fishing," and our earliest 
ambition was to go with him. Somehow, the fact 
that I was a girl never seemed to make any differ- 
ence in my castles in the air, and all of us, boys and 
girls alike, grew up with the idea that to be like 
father was the highest possible attainment. 

As soon as we were able to read we read his 
stories of camping that came out in the magazines. 
The article on " Ampersand" was the first and ap- 
peared in Harper's Magazine in 1885. But we were 
too young then, of course, to appreciate them, and 
I am afraid we preferred the story of "The Little 
Girl in the Well" and "Tommy Lizard and Frankie 
Frog," and other wonderful tales that he invented 
and told us between supper and bedtime. 

Every Sunday we sat all in a row up in the sec- 
ond pew in the big church and heard him preach. 
Then in the afternoon, or on stormy Sundays, we 
put the chairs in the nursery in rows and one of us 



1 62 Story of the Author s Life 

would preach while the others were congregation 
or choir. This was the nearest we ever came to 
appreciating the sermons that were all the time 
being made down in the study just below us. Dur- 
ing this time he published "The Reality of Relig- 
ion, "The Story of the Psalms," *'God and Little 
Children," and ''The Poetry of Tennyson," besides 
many magazine articles. The sermons we liked 
best, though, were the Christmas sermons, which 
were always stories, and which were afterward pub- 
lished. Among them were 'The Other Wise Man," 
"The Lost Word," and "The First Christmas-Tree." 

When we saw his books coming out we were fired 
with the ambition to publish books too, so we had 
a "Book Company" which he encouraged by his 
patronage. We wrote stories, laboriously printed 
them with pen and ink, illustrated them in water- 
colors, and bound them in cardboard and colored 
paper. We soon had quite a library, with contri- 
butions from all the family, and in all this niy father 
was our wisest friend and critic. 

So the making of books was a reality to us, and 
we were interested not only in the writing, but in 
the illustrations and binding. I remember one 
afternoon my father had gone out in a hurry, leav- 
ing his study in great disorder. I was always more 
fond of the study than of any room in the house, 
probably because entrance was forbidden most of 
the time when he was working; so taking advan- 
tage of his absence, I slid in and found the floor 
covered with photographs and prints and piles of 



From a Child's Pomt of View 163 

books. It looked like a veritable workshop, and the 
disorder delighted my heart; so I spent the after- 
noon there, and finally persuaded myself that there 
would be nothing wrong in taking one small photo- 
graph of the Madonna and child, which I especially 
liked, if I put it back soon. I remember what a 
time I had returning it to its place the next day, 
and then with what interest, many months later, I 
saw the picture reproduced on one of the pages of 
the ''Christ Child in Art" which came out in 1894. 
I really felt that I had had a part in the making of 
that book. 

Of the making of rhymes, too, there was no end. 
Sometimes at the dinner-table my father would sit 
perfectly quiet for ten minutes, apparently wrapped 
in thought, while we chattered and discussed the 
doings of the morning or planned for the afternoon ; 
and then if we stopped for a moment and looked at 
him we would see a smile dawning on his face, and 
a new-made nonsense rhyme was recited much to 
our delight. We often tried to persuade him to 
write a book for children, but although he seemed 
to have plenty of time to make it up, he was always 
too busy to write it down. 

The best times of all, though, were the summer 
months, when we left the hot, dusty city and went' 
down to the little white cottage on the south shore 
of Long Island. Here he first taught us the gentle 
art of fishing, and how well I remember the morn- 
ings he spent showing us how to catch the minnows 
for bait in a mosquito-net (for catching the bait 



164 Story of the Author s Life 

was always part of the game), and then how he 
stood with us for hours on the high drawbridge 
across the channel, showing us the easy little twitch 
of the wrist that hooks the fish, and how to take 
him off the hook and save the bait. They were only 
young bluefish, or little "snappers," as we called 
them, and seldom more than eight inches long, but 
we were as proud as though they were salmon. 
Real trout we had never caught, though we had 
often jumped up from the supper-table and run to 
meet him when he came in after dark with his bas- 
ket full of wet, shiny, speckled ones. Then how 
exciting it was to weigh the biggest one and hear 
about the still bigger one that got away. That was 
always a good reason for going back the next day, 
and sometimes, if we had been very good, he would 
take one or two of us up under the bridge, and up 
the narrow, winding stream, till we came to where 
the branches interlaced overhead and the boat would 
go no farther. There he left us at the little rustic 
bridge and waded up the stream above, while we 
sat breathless to hear his halloo, which meant he 
was coming back, and to find out what luck he had 
had in those mysterious mazes above the bridge. 

Those were the happiest days of our summer, and, 
as my father says, it was the stream which made 
them so. 

But these were only day's trips, and I longed for 
real camping out. Every fall my father went hun- 
dreds of miles away up to Canada where there were 
real bears and wolves in the woods and where you 



From a Child's Point of View 165 

travelled for days without seeing a house or a per- 
son. I had often heard him tell his experiences 
much as they are now recorded in "Camping Out" 
in this book. Especially did we become interested 
in the French guides, whose letters to him I read 
eagerly, though slowly, for they were written in 
French. 

Finally, to my earnest entreaties, there came a 
sort of half promise that I might go some time 
when I was bigger and stronger, but it seemed so 
indefinite that I quite despaired, and great was my 
surprise and joy one day when my father asked 
me if I would like to go camping that very day. 
The tent and the great heavy blankets and rubber 
sheets were taken out of their canvas wrapping 
where they were lying waiting for the fall and 
Canada. My father put on his corduroys and home- 
spun and his old weather-stained gray felt hat, with 
the flies stuck all around the band, and I donned 
my oldest sailor suit, and with a few pots and pans, 
a small supply of provisions which the family 
helped us get together, and our two fishing-rods, 
we were ready for the start. We took the long trip 
(about a mile) in an old flat-bottomed row-boat, 
and my mother and little brothers came with us to 
see us settled. Our camping ground was in a pine 
grove near a small inlet to the salt-water bay on 
which our cottage faced, so that, although the 
stream was blocked with weeds and stumps, the 
easiest way to get there was by water. We reached 
the place about four in the afternoon, moored the 



1 66 Story of the Author s Life 

boat, and carried the tent and provisions up a little 
hill to the place my father had chosen. It seemed 
miles and miles from home, and very wild. We 
had nothing for supper, and I remember wonder- 
ing whether my father would shoot some wild ani- 
mal or whether we would catch some fish. The 
latter course was chosen, much to my disappoint- 
ment, and after the tent was pitched, the provisions 
unpacked, and my mother and brothers had left us 
all alone, we started out with rods and tackle to 
catch our supper. Fortunately the fish were biting 
well, and with my rising appetite they came more 
and more frequently, until we had a basketful. 
Then we had to stop by the stream to prepare them 
for the pan, so it was almost dark when we threaded 
our way back through the deep forest of pines to 
the little white tent. But we soon built the fire 
and made things look more cheerful. How good 
the fish looked as they sizzled away over the glow- 
ing fire, and they tasted even better, eaten right 
out of the same pan they were cooked in. That was 
one of the best suppers I ever recall eating, and 
surely half the pleasure came from the comradeship 
of a father who shared and sympathized with my 
thoughts and entered into my fun with the spirits 
of a boy. 

It was an experience which I shall never forget, 
and which, like most of the delightful "first" things 
I have done, I shall always associate with my 
father. For he was our guide in everything; and 
besides the fishing trips, there were long Sunday 



From a Child's Point of View 167 

afternoon walks through the woods and a growing 
acquaintance with the songs of the birds and with 
the wild flowers. He made us listen for the first 
notes of the bluebird in spring and to the *' Sweet — 
sweet — sweet — very merry cheer" of the song spar- 
rows that sang in the lilac hedge around our cot- 
tage. It was there that he wrote "The Song Spar- 
row" and a good many of the poems that came out 
later in a book called "The Builders and Other 
Poems." But my first realization that my father 
was a poet came when my two brothers and myself 
were brought down here to Princeton in 1896 to 
hear him read the ode at the one hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of Princeton College. How 
proud we felt to be the only children in that grave 
assembly of gowned and hooded scholars, and how 
fine it was to see our own father standing there on 
the platform and reciting the ode for his Alma 
Mater, the college we had cheered for and whose 
colors we had worn through defeat or victory every 
spring and fall. To be sure we were interested in 
Harvard too, because he had often been elected 
preacher to the university there, and in Yale, be- 
cause he had been Lyman Beecher Lecturer there, 
and in other colleges where he had received aca- 
demic honors ; but we were ever loyal to Princeton, 
where he and our grandfather and our great-grand- 
father had been students. 

Our Dutch ancestry was brought to our minds 
the year he was President of the Holland Society, 
and our Presbyterianism emphasized when he be- 



1 68 Story of the Authors Life 

came Moderator of the General Assembly of that 
church and brought home a fine white ivory gavel 
which some Alaskan mission church had sent to him 
and which he now keeps on one of the library book- 
cases. Thus in all his work, as well as in his fish- 
ing, we have followed him, and he takes us into 
his plans and tells us as much as we can understand 
of what he is doing. 

In 1900 he was called to be the first occupant of 
the Murray chair of English Literature in Prince- 
ton University, and we now have, what we have 
always wanted, a home in the country. Here, 
though he has left the strain and rush of city life, 
he seems busier than ever, for he still preaches every 
Sunday, usually at university and college chapels, 
and his calendar is always filled with lecture en- 
gagements all over the country. Preacher, poet, 
lecturer — his professions are many, though his aim 
is one, to lift the world up and make it a better, 
happier one than he found it. 

But with all this work there is a shelf in the 
library at Avalon on which the line of books is 
steadily increasing. That is the shelf where my 
father's books, each one of which he has especially 
bound and gives to my mother, are kept„ Two of 
the latest additions to this shelf are the books of 
short stories, *'The Ruling Passion" and "The Blue 
Flower," and I think we have been more interested 
in the making of these two than in any others. For 
we have seen the stories grow and have known many 
of the characters that he has so faithfully drawn. 



From a Child^s Point of View 169 

The scenes of some are laid in places that we are 
very familiar with and many of the incidents have 
taken place before our eyes. My father keeps a 
small black leather note-book, one that would fit in 
a jacket pocket. When a story comes to him he 
jots down a word or two — a phrase, or something 
that suggests what is in his mind and would call 
up the same train of thought — then puts the note- 
book away till he has had time to think the story 
out in full, or, more often, until he has time to write 
it down. Sometimes it is only a catchword, some- 
times half a page, but he always seems to have 
two or three stories ahead of him waiting to be 
written. 

About three summers ago there were so many 
stories on this waiting-list that my father knew they 
would give him no peace of mind until written down 
in black and white. We were spending that sum- 
mer on an island off the coast of Massachusetts, and 
our little cottage was in the midst of all the merry- 
making, near the ocean, and facing a field where 
all sizes of boys played base-ball every afternoon. 
It was not at all an atmosphere for writing, so my 
father, on one of his walks of discovery to the mid- 
dle of the island, found an old deserted farm-house 
standing back from the road on a little rise of 
ground. There were apple-trees around it and a 
grape-vine straggling over the trellised porch, and 
from the window of what once was probably the 
sitting-room there was a tiny glimpse of the blue 
sea far away in the distance. No discordant sounds 



l^O Story of the Author s Life 

reached this quiet spot, and here my father spent a 
good part of the summer writing a great many of 
the stories in "The Blue Flower." He would go 
out to his farm-house study every morning, return- 
ing in body, though not in spirit, to lunch, and then 
go out again to work for the rest of the afternoon. 
As soon as a story was finished, we would gather, 
after supper, around the lamp and he would read it 
to us. What a delight it was to recognize some of 
our old friends or familiar places, or to make the 
acquaintance of new and even better ones. We 
were sorry when the stories were all finished and 
the book had gone to the publisher. 

My father's latest book is ''Music, and Other 
Poems," and most of these were written here in his 
study at Avalon, though some he wrote down in 
Augusta, Ga., where he spent part of last winter. 
The "Ode to Music" he was almost two years in 
writing, taking up, of course, other things in the 
mean time. Several days ago the following came to 
my father from James Whitcomb Riley : 

Music ! yea, and the airs you play — 

Out of the faintest Far-away 

And the sweetest, too ; and the dearest here, 

With its quavering voice but its bravest cheer — 

The prayer that aches to be all expressed — 

The kiss of love at its tenderest. 

Music — music with glad heart-throbs 

Within it ; and music with tears and sobs 

Shaking it, as the startled soul 

Is shaken at shriek of the fife and roll 



From a Child's Point of View 171 

Of the drums ; — then as suddenly lulled again 

By the whisper and lisp of the summer rain. 

Mist of melodies, fragrance fine — 

The bird -song-flicked from the eglantine 

With the dews where the springing bramble throws 

A rarer drench on its ripest rose, 

And the winged song soars up and sinks 

To a dove's dim coo by the river brinks, 

Where the ripple's voice still laughs along 

Its glittering path of light and song. 

Music, O poet, and all your own 

By right of capture, and that alone — • 

For in it we hear the harmony 

Born of the earth and the air and the sea, 

And over and under it, and all through, 

We catch the chime of the Anthem, too. 



But in spite of his many duties he still finds time 
to fish, and since we have lived here he has taken 
me on a real camping trip in Canada and taught 
me to catch real salmon, as well as showing me the 
scenes of a good many of his stories in "The Ruling 
Passion." So now I know what real fisherman's 
luck is, for though "we sometimes caught plenty 
and sometimes few, we never came back without a 
good catch of happiness," and my father has taught 
me the real meaning of the last stanza of "The 
Angler's Reveille" : 

Then come, my friend, forget your foes and leave your fears 

behind, 
And wander out to try your luck with cheerful, quiet mind ; 



172 Story of the Author s Life 

For be your fortune great or small, you'll take what God may 

give, 
And through the day your heart shall say, 

Tw luck enough to live. 

Brooke van Dyke. 

Avalon, Princeton, N. J., 
January 21, 1905. 



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